PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

A repurposed anti-inflammatory drug may help treat alcohol use disorder and related pain

Scripps Research scientists find that apremilast, an FDA-approved anti-inflammatory drug, reduced both drinking and pain sensitivity in preclinical models of alcohol use disorder.

2025-04-22
(Press-News.org) LA JOLLA, CA—A preclinical study from scientists at Scripps Research finds that a drug already FDA-approved for treating inflammatory conditions may help reduce both alcohol intake and pain sensitivity—two issues that commonly co-occur with alcohol use disorder (AUD).

The results, published in JCI Insight on April 22, 2025, suggest that the drug apremilast—a phosphodiesterase-4 (PDE4) inhibitor, or a compound that blocks an enzyme involved in inflammation—could be repurposed as a dual-acting therapy for AUD, particularly in individuals who have pain during and after alcohol use.

AUD affects an estimated 400 million people aged 15 years or older, according to the World Health Organization. Chronic pain is one of the strongest predictors of alcohol relapse, yet it’s often overlooked in AUD treatment strategies. People with AUD frequently experience mechanical allodynia as well, a condition in which even light touch is perceived as painful. This sensitivity can persist during abstinence and contribute to ongoing alcohol use and relapse.

“Our findings highlight the therapeutic value of apremilast to reduce co-occurring drinking and mechanical allodynia in long-term abstinence—a critical component of harmful drinking and AUD psychopathology,” says senior author Marisa Roberto, a professor of neuroscience at Scripps Research.

Currently FDA-approved for treating psoriasis (a chronic autoimmune skin condition) and psoriatic arthritis (a related joint disease), apremilast has previously been shown to reduce alcohol drinking in both mice and humans. The new study builds on that work by examining whether apremilast could also ease pain linked to alcohol exposure.

To investigate, the research team tested apremilast in a type of rat genetically predisposed to higher alcohol consumption and in a standard genetic strain of rats. Both rat strains were given access to alcohol and treated with either apremilast or a placebo.

Apremilast significantly reduced alcohol intake across strains and biological sexes. It also decreased pain sensitivity in most groups, both immediately after drinking and during abstinence—ranging from 24 hours to four weeks after alcohol had been removed.

“But at specific time points, the patterns of reduction differed between males and females, as well as between strains,” notes first author Bryan Cruz, a postdoctoral fellow at Scripps Research. For example, the pain-relieving effects of apremilast weren’t observed in some of the male rats, underscoring the importance of considering biological sex in future studies.

In another set of experiments, apremilast increased GABAergic transmission—a type of inhibitory signaling that helps regulate pain and stress—in the central amygdala, a cerebral region involved in both addiction and pain. This effect was only observed in the standard strain of rats, suggesting that apremilast’s impact on brain signaling may depend on genetic background or vulnerability to AUD.

In both strains of male rats, alcohol exposure increased expression of PDE4 genes in the brain, further supporting a link between inflammation, pain and compulsive alcohol use. While other PDE4 inhibitors have been studied for pain unrelated to alcohol consumption, apremilast may offer a path toward more personalized therapies for those with both AUD and pain. But clinical research is still needed to determine the drug’s efficacy for such conditions in humans.

Going forward, the researchers also plan to explore whether apremilast can mitigate anxiety and other negative emotional states that commonly emerge during alcohol withdrawal.

“For over a decade, it’s been well-established that withdrawal-induced anxiety is a major driver of relapse,” points out Roberto. “Therefore, addressing other key components of the addiction cycle is critical, as many individuals use alcohol to cope not only with physical pain but with emotional distress as well.”

In addition to Cruz and Roberto, authors of the study, “Apremilast reduces co-occurring alcohol drinking and mechanical allodynia and regulates central amygdala GABAergic transmission,” are Valentina Vozella, Vittoria Borgonetti, Celsey M. St. Onge, Ryan Bullard, Roman Vlkolinsky, Diego Gomez-Ceballos, Amanda J. Roberts and Michal Bajo of Scripps Research; Angela R. Ozburn of Oregon Health & Science University and VA Portland Health Care System; and Roberto Ciccocioppo of the University of Camerino.

This work was supported by funding from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (grants AA027700, AA013498, P60 AA006420, AA017447, AA021491, AA029841, K99 AA030609, T32 AA007456, K99 AA031718, AA013519 and AA010760); the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs (grant I01 BX004699); and the Schimmel Family Chair.

About Scripps Research

Scripps Research is an independent, nonprofit biomedical research institute ranked one of the most influential in the world for its impact on innovation by Nature Index. We are advancing human health through profound discoveries that address pressing medical concerns around the globe. Our drug discovery and development division, Calibr-Skaggs, works hand-in-hand with scientists across disciplines to bring new medicines to patients as quickly and efficiently as possible, while teams at Scripps Research Translational Institute harness genomics, digital medicine and cutting-edge informatics to understand individual health and render more effective healthcare. Scripps Research also trains the next generation of leading scientists at our Skaggs Graduate School, consistently named among the top 10 US programs for chemistry and biological sciences. Learn more at www.scripps.edu.

END


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Obesity disrupts “reaction time” to starvation in mice

2025-04-22
Researchers led by Keigo Morita and Shinya Kuroda of the University of Tokyo have revealed a temporal disruption in the metabolism of obese mice when adapting to starvation despite no significant structural disruptions in the molecular network. This is a breakthrough discovery as research including the temporal dimension in biology has been notoriously laborious and extracting systematic insight from big data has been difficult. Thus, this study paves the way for further research into more general metabolic processes, such as food intake and disease progression. The findings were published in the journal Science Signaling. Living beings need to continuously extract energy from “food” ...

Listening to an avatar makes you more likely to gamble

2025-04-22
Expecting feedback from an avatar compared to a real human facilitates risk-taking behavior in a gambling task, and a brain region called the amygdala is central to this facilitation, according to a study published April 22nd in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Toshiko Tanaka and Masahiko Haruno from the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, Japan. In virtual-reality environments, individuals can adopt various forms of avatars, projecting their behaviors into a virtual realm where their interaction partners also appear as avatars. With this shift in ...

Facial expressions of avatars promote risky decision-making

2025-04-22
Highlights - Humans take more risks when interacting with facial expressions shown on avatars rather than real human faces. - This shift in risk-taking behavior is linked to activity in the amygdala. - The findings offer new insights into both the advantages and the cautionary aspects of communication via avatars.   Abstract A research team led by Dr. TANAKA Toshiko and Dr. HARUNO Masahiko at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT, President: TOKUDA Hideyuki Ph.D.), investigated how avatar-mediated communication affects human decision-making. They ...

PREPSOIL Final Event: Facilitating the deployment of the Mission Soil across European regions

2025-04-22
Monday May 26, 2025, key stakeholders from across Europe will gather in Brussels at the Committee of the Regions for the PREPSOIL Final Event, marking a major step in advancing soil  health policies and practices. The event will bring together policy-makers, researchers, and civil society representatives to discuss how the objectives of the Mission Soil and the proposed Soil  Monitoring Law may be supported and implemented at regional and local scale across EU Member States and the role that regional and local actors can play in promoting ...

Politecnico di Milano: a study in Earth’s future on agrivoltaics reducing the competition between food and energy

2025-04-22
Can agriculture and solar energy work together instead of competing? A study led by Maddalena Curioni, Nikolas Galli, Giampaolo Manzolini and Maria Cristina Rulli, researchers in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Department of Energy at the Politecnico di Milano, sheds new light on the potential of agrivoltaics. Published in the prestigious journal Earth’s Future, the paper analyses how the coexistence of photovoltaic panels and agricultural crops can help solve the global conflict over land use. With the growing demand for renewable energy and the need to produce increasing amounts of food, the pressure on arable land is intensifying. ...

Listeners use gestures to predict upcoming words

2025-04-22
In face-to-face conversations, speakers use hand movements to signal meaning. But do listeners actually use these gestures to predict what someone might say next? In a study using virtual avatars, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and Radboud University in Nijmegen show that listeners used the avatar’s gestures to predict upcoming speech. Both behavioural and EEG data indicated that hand gestures facilitate language processing, illustrating the multimodal nature of human communication. People might wiggle their fingers when they talk about typing, depicting a ‘typing’ movement. Seeing meaningful hand movements—also called iconic gestures—helps ...

An AI tool grounded in evidence-based medicine outperformed other AI tools — and most doctors — on USMLE exams

2025-04-22
BUFFALO, N.Y. — A powerful clinical artificial intelligence tool developed by University at Buffalo biomedical informatics researchers has demonstrated remarkable accuracy on all three parts of the United States Medical Licensing Exam (Step exams), according to a paper published today (April 22) in JAMA Network Open. Achieving higher scores on the USMLE than most physicians and all other AI tools so far, Semantic Clinical Artificial Intelligence (SCAI, pronounced “Sky”) has the potential to become a critical partner for ...

Adolescents who sleep longer perform better at cognitive tasks

2025-04-22
Adolescents who sleep for longer – and from an earlier bedtime – than their peers tend to have improved brain function and perform better at cognitive tests, researchers from the UK and China have shown. But the study of adolescents in the US also showed that even those with better sleeping habits were not reaching the amount of sleep recommended for their age group. Sleep plays an important role in helping our bodies function. It is thought that while we are asleep, toxins that have built up in our brains are cleared out, and brain connections are consolidated and pruned, enhancing memory, learning, and problem-solving skills. Sleep has also been shown to boost our immune ...

A ‘dopamine detox’ is too simplistic, new study finds

2025-04-22
Dopamine signals in different parts of the brain rise and fall in complex patterns as animals learn to avoid danger Findings shed light on why the ‘dopamine detox’ trend is too simplistic First study to track how dopamine signals evolve over time The findings may help explain how dopamine signaling contributes to excessive avoidance in disorders like in anxiety and OCD, where individuals overestimate danger CHICAGO --- Dopamine is the brain’s motivational spark, driving us to chase what feels good, say scrolling another reel on social ...

Alcohol use and abusive or neglectful behaviors among family caregivers of patients with dementia

2025-04-22
About The Study: In this microlongitudinal cohort study of family caregivers of relatives with dementia, hazardous drinking and daily alcohol consumption were significantly and independently associated with increased odds of abusive and neglectful behaviors, highlighting the need for personalized interventions that address caregiving complexities and alcohol use patterns. Corresponding author: To contact the corresponding author, Carolyn E. Z. Pickering, Ph.D., R.N., email pickering@uth.tmc.edu. To ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Fat may play an important role in brain metabolism

New study finds no lasting impact of pandemic pet ownership on human well-being

New insights on genetic damage of some chemotherapies could guide future treatments with less harmful side effects

Gut microbes could protect us from toxic ‘forever chemicals’

Novel modelling links sea ice loss to Antarctic ice shelf calving events

Scientists can tell how fast you're aging from a single brain scan

U.S. uterine cancer incidence and mortality rates expected to significantly increase by 2050

Public take the lead in discovery of new exploding star

What are they vaping? Study reveals alarming surge in adolescent vaping of THC, CBD, and synthetic cannabinoids

ECMWF - delivering forecasts over 10 times faster and cutting energy usage by 1000

Brazilian neuroscientist reveals how viral infections transform the brain through microscopic detective work

Turning social fragmentation into action through discovering relatedness

Cheese may really be giving you nightmares, scientists find

Study reveals most common medical emergencies in schools

Breathable yet protective: Next-gen medical textiles with micro/nano networks

Frequency-engineered MXene supercapacitors enable efficient pulse charging in TENG–SC hybrid systems

Developed an AI-based classification system for facial pigmented lesions

Achieving 20% efficiency in halogen-free organic solar cells via isomeric additive-mediated sequential processing

New book Terraglossia reclaims language, Country and culture

The most effective diabetes drugs don't reach enough patients yet

Breast cancer risk in younger women may be influenced by hormone therapy

Strategies for staying smoke-free after rehab

Commentary questions the potential benefit of levothyroxine treatment of mild hypothyroidism during pregnancy

Study projects over 14 million preventable deaths by 2030 if USAID defunding continues

New study reveals 33% gap in transplant access for UK’s poorest children

Dysregulated epigenetic memory in early embryos offers new clues to the inheritance of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS)

IVF and IUI pregnancy rates remain stable across Europe, despite an increasing uptake of single embryo transfer

It takes a village: Chimpanzee babies do better when their moms have social connections

From lab to market: how renewable polymers could transform medicine

Striking increase in obesity observed among youth between 2011 and 2023

[Press-News.org] A repurposed anti-inflammatory drug may help treat alcohol use disorder and related pain
Scripps Research scientists find that apremilast, an FDA-approved anti-inflammatory drug, reduced both drinking and pain sensitivity in preclinical models of alcohol use disorder.