Skin Disease Treatment Could Reduce Excess Drinking: Study

An “incredibly promising” treatment to reduce excess drinking has been discovered by researchers from the Oregon Health & Science University and other institutions throughout the US. The medication is used to treat a common skin condition.

The Journal of Clinical Investigation recently published its study.

The average amount of alcohol consumed by those using the drug, termed apremilast, decreased from five to two drinks per day.

“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” said co-senior author Angela Ozburn, Ph.D., associate professor of behavioral neuroscience in the OHSU School of Medicine and a research biologist with the Portland VA Health Care System.

Kolter Grigsby, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in the Ozburn laboratory at OHSU, is the lead author.

In 2015, Ozburn and colleagues started searching a genetic database for substances that would inhibit the expression of genes known to be connected to heavy alcohol intake. A potential contender was the FDA-approved anti-inflammatory drug apremilast, which is used to treat psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis.

They subsequently examined it in two distinct animal models that were genetically predisposed to excessive drinking, as well as in additional mouse strains, at several labs around the nation. Apremilast decreased drinking among a range of models inclined to light to heavy alcohol usage in each instance. The area of the brain responsible for regulating alcohol intake, the nucleus accumbens, was found to become more active when apremilast was administered, according to the study’s findings.

Then, apremilast was put to the test on humans by scientists at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California.

51 participants were evaluated over the course of an 11-day treatment period in a double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical proof-of-concept study carried out by the Scripps team.

“Apremilast’s large effect size on reducing drinking, combined with its good tolerability in our participants, suggests it is an excellent candidate for further evaluation as a novel treatment for people with alcohol use disorder,” said co-senior author Barbara Mason, Ph.D., Pearson Family professor in the Department of Molecular Medicine at Scripps.

The clinical study involved people with alcohol use disorder who weren’t seeking any form of treatment, and Mason predicts that apremilast may be even more effective among people who are motivated to reduce excess drinking behavior.

“It’s imperative for more clinical trials to be done on people seeking treatment,” Ozburn said. “In this study, we saw that apremilast worked in mice. It worked in different labs, and it worked in people. This is incredibly promising for the treatment of addiction in general.”

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism estimates that 95,000 Americans pass away each year as a result of alcohol-related causes.

Antabuse, which causes acute sensitivity to alcohol similar to a hangover, acamprosate, which is thought to stabilize chemical signaling in the brain linked to relapse, and naltrexone, which blocks the euphoric effects of both alcohol and opioids, are the three medications currently approved for treating alcohol use disorder in the United States.

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