According to a study, a prescription medicine routinely used to treat psoriasis in adults could potentially be used to reduce alcohol use and addiction.
Researchers from the Scripps Research Institute in the United States discovered that the medicine Apremilast can “substantially lower” alcohol intake by more than 50% in those with severe alcohol use disorder (AUD).
Millions Of Americans Meet Criteria For AUD
The study, which was just published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, also discovered that the medicine increases activity in a brain region known to play a role in AUD.
Around 29.5 million Americans fit the criteria for AUD, which includes the disorders of alcohol abuse, dependence, and addiction. Less than 10% of patients with the illness receive any therapy, and even fewer are prescribed medication to address the disorder.
Mason is the director of the Integrated Neuroscience Initiative on Alcoholism-NeuroImmune (INIA-NeuroImmune), a multidisciplinary, collaborative collaboration sponsored by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) to investigate the underlying biology of alcohol use disorder.
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AUD Treatments
The INIA-NeuroImmune collaboration identified apremilast (marketed as Otezla®) as a medication having the potential to treat AUD. The medicine was known to inhibit PDE4, a molecule that is critical in both immunological and brain cell activity.
While its usage in psoriasis treatment is owing to its immunological function, basic scientific research in mice has revealed that suppressing PDE4 in the brain could lower alcohol consumption.
The trial included 51 paid adult volunteers with severe AUD, none of whom were actively attempting to reduce their alcohol consumption. Each participant took a daily dose of either apremilast or a placebo for 14 days.
At the outset of the trial, participants drank roughly five alcoholic beverages each day on average. Those who received the placebo drank approximately five drinks every day, but those who took apremilast drank only about two drinks per day.
Also, apremilast reduced the number of days on which individuals were classified as “strong drinkers.” Those who took apremilast claimed anecdotally that they felt no temptation to drink and lacked the desire for alcohol that they usually had.
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