Opioid-use disorder affects two million people in the United States. Although many people with this chronic brain disorder eventually will seek treatment, the vast majority of patients undergoing medical management and psychosocial therapy—some fifty to seventy percent—relapse and take the drugs again at least once.
Now, Cummings School Assistant Professor Fair Vassoler is working with Weinberg Medical Physics, a Maryland-based medical-device incubator, to study a new way to potentially curb the opioid cravings that contribute to relapse. Together, the researchers are testing if a new kind of deep-brain-stimulation can reduce drug-seeking behaviors.
Traditional deep-brain stimulation uses electrodes implanted in the brain to trigger different kinds of neurological activity. The FDA-approved procedure has successfully treated movement disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease, with few serious side effects. While a graduate student researcher at University of Pennsylvania, Vassoler conducted research indicating that the treatment reduced cocaine-seeking behavior in rats, a model of human relapse. This treatment method for human addiction entered clinical trials for misuse of opioids, alcohol, cocaine, and meth in China, Canada, France, and Germany about nine years ago, said Vassoler, who noted that the first U.S. patient was implanted to treat opioid-use disorder at West Virginia University Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute at the end of 2019.
