New Treatments Are Needed For Alcohol Addiction. Are Drugs Like Ozempic A Solution?

Alcohol Addiction: “At this point, I don’t feel like I have a drinking problem, but I also know if I go off the medication, I’ll reconsider,” she said. “That’s what scares me.”

Alcohol Addiction, “I needed that feeling of not being able to feel life for a little bit,” she said.

That changed in June 2023 after she took her first dose of Mounjaro. “From day one, it has literally changed me in every aspect of my life,” she said.

Kara Stainbrook lost the desire to drink when she starting taking a GLP-1 drug.

Her experience is what W. Kyle Simmons, a professor of pharmacology and physiology at Oklahoma State University, in Tulsa, wants to better understand.

New Treatments Are Needed For Alcohol Addiction

Alcohol Addiction, “These drugs may sort of turn down the gain on the reward system in the brain, which then makes craving for food, alcohol, various types of drugs decrease,” he said. “The consequence of that is that it may help people to abstain from taking those drugs, may help them to drink less, and what we want to understand is, at a biological level, how that happens.”

Simmons is the director of OSU’s Biomedical Imaging Center and lead investigator on the Semaglutide Therapy for Alcohol Reduction — Tulsa, or STAR-T, clinical trial. He also published one of the first case series that found semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic, to effectively reduce alcohol consumption among six people with addiction.

Simmons and his team are tracking how people with alcohol use disorder respond to semaglutide through changes in their brains and behavior. Using neuroimaging, they could see how the drug might change the way participants’ brains responded to alcohol.

Alcohol Addiction, Kara Stainbrook has held on to the last bottle of vodka she started to drink before she lost her desire to consume alcohol.

Observational studies that looked at medical records have shown a link between semaglutide prescriptions and a lower risk of alcohol use disorder, cannabis use disorder, and opioid use disorder, but Simmons said more research is needed to prove whether it could be a safe and effective treatment.

Dr. Lorenzo Leggio, a scientist at the National Institute on Drug Abuse in Baltimore, works closely with Simmons. He’s the lead investigator of a similar trial in Baltimore, called STAR-B.

Alcohol Addiction, “This may be the most exciting time of my career so far,” said Leggio, who’s been looking for a new medication for alcohol use disorder for years.

“The number of people with alcohol use disorder who receive an FDA-approved medication for alcohol use disorder in the United States is 2%,” he said. “My hope is that in addition to moving sciences forward, we’ll also be able to hopefully narrow the gap.”

Joseph Schacht, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University Of Colorado School Of Medicine, is studying how the oral form of semaglutide, sold under the brand name Rybelsus, may help people with alcohol addiction stop drinking.

He said there’s an immense need for new treatments for alcohol use disorder.

Alcohol Addiction, “Many people who take those medications see no effect, and then there are a few people who see a larger effect. So we need better drugs,” Schacht said. “We really need something that has a bigger effect, and we’re all very hopeful that these GLP-1 drugs may represent that drug.”

Experts also hope that if the drugs prove to be successful, they will help convince people that alcohol use disorder is a disease, rather than a bad behavior or a moral weakness.

“If these medications are effective, and if people see that, it may help them understand that alcohol and substance use disorders are fundamentally brain disorders that people don’t have control over their behavior, and that a medication like this can restore that control for them,” Schacht said.

Still, medication is only one part of treatment.

Alcohol Addiction, “Treating addiction is a holistic approach,” said Dr. Manassa Hany, who is director of addiction psychiatry at Northwell’s Zucker Hillside and South Oaks hospitals in New York. “It’s not just a pill that you’re going to give to a person. You really need to work on other aspects of the socioeconomic, psychological, current mental illness and medical illness and support system as well.”

Hany said that he anticipates semaglutide, like other treatments, to have its own cost and effectiveness barriers. “I think it would be like any other medicine,” he said. “It will work for some and will not work for others.”

Alcohol Addiction, Simmons said if it’s discovered that semaglutide helps treat alcohol addiction, there will still be questions to answer about how the drug would fit into treatment plans and promote long-term recovery. “One model for how these drugs could be used in addiction medicine would be to have a person take these drugs, say, in the first you know, six months or a year of recovery to help knock down the cravings and also give them time to utilize other resources.”

This is the question that worries Stainbrook. As of January 1, her insurance will no longer cover his medications.

Alcohol Addiction, “At this point, I don’t feel like I have a drinking problem, but I also know if I go off the medication, I kind of think I will again,” she said. “That’s what scares me                       ”.

Kara Stainbrook depended on alcohol to get through the day for two years. The 45-year-old from Mercer, Pennsylvania, was going through a bottle of vodka a week, sometimes two, and hiding it from her family and friends.

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