CNS & Neurological Disorders - Drug Targets (Formerly Current Drug Targets - CNS & Neurological Disorders) - Volume 14, Issue 6, 2015

There is growing recognition that glial proinflammatory activation importantly contributes to the rewarding and reinforcing effects of a variety of drugs of abuse, including cocaine, methamphetamine, opioids, and alcohol. It has recently been proposed that glia are recognizing, and becoming activated by, such drugs as a CNS immunological response to these agents being xenobiotics; that is, substances foreign to the brain. Ac Read More

Abuse of and addiction to psychostimulants such as cocaine or amphetamines remain a significant societal burden, and attempts at successfully developing effective treatments for substance use disorders involving psychostimulants have been disappointingly unsuccessful to date. In addition, most pharmacologically based approaches to treating psychostimulant use disorders have largely focused on targeting monoaminergic Read More

The identification of effective medications for the management of cocaine use disorders remains an unmet public health challenge. In view of the prominent role of dopaminergic mechanisms in cocaine’s abuse-related effects, research has focused on the development of subtype-selective dopamine D1-4 receptor antagonists. Here, we briefly recap the current status of this research effort, with a focus on several aspects of Read More

Pharmacologic agents for CNS disorders are often inhibitors that occupy receptors, with frequent unavoidable side effects likely due to continuous binding. This review summarizes development of a novel aldehyde dehydrogenase 2 (ALDH2) inhibitor that specifically targets unique drug related episodic surges in dopamine (DA), a pathophysiologic mechanism that appears to underlie much of drug-seeking behavior. We have synt Read More

As of 2008, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, nearly 1.4 million Americans met the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders criteria for dependence or abuse of cocaine (in any form) in the past 12 months. However, there are no treatments for cocaine use disorders approved by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA). Alterations in gene regulation contribute significantly to the changes t Read More

A high rate of relapse is a defining characteristic of substance use disorder for which few treatments are available. Exposure to environmental cues associated with previous drug use can elicit relapse by causing the involuntary retrieval of deeply engrained associative memories that trigger a strong motivation to seek out drugs. Our lab is focused on identifying and disrupting mechanisms that support these powerful consolidat Read More

Although few medications have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to assist people to quit tobacco smoking, there are no FDA-approved medications to treat dependence on other psychostimulant drugs, such as cocaine. The motivation to maintain psychostimulant drug seeking and self-administration involves alterations in glutamatergic neurotransmission. Thus, medications that modulate glutamat Read More

The development of new treatments for substance use disorders requires identification of targetable molecular mechanisms. Pathology in glutamatergic neurotransmission system in brain reward circuitry has been implicated in relapse to multiple classes of drugs. Glutamate transporter 1 (GLT-1) crucially regulates glutamatergic signaling by removing excess glutamate from the extrasynaptic space. The purpo Read More

Psychotropic actions of cocaine are generally thought to involve its blockade of monoamine transporters leading to increased synaptic levels of monoamines, especially dopamine. Subsequent intracellular events have been less well characterized. We describe a signaling system wherein lower behavioral stimulant doses of cocaine, as well as higher neurotoxic doses, activate a cascade wherein nitric oxide nitrosylates glyc Read More

Drug-induced changes in gene expression likely contribute to long-lasting structural and functional alterations in the brain’s reward circuitry and the persistence of addiction. Modulation of chromatin structure through covalent histone modifications has emerged as an important regulator of gene transcription in brain and increasing evidence suggests that misregulation of histone acetylation contributes to the establishment and m Read More

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disease characterized by the loss of mainly the nigrostriatal dopaminergic neurons, which leads to motor dysfunction. Although, most of the drugs are currently used for symptomatic treatment, there are at least three FDA-approved drugs for the treatment of PD that have been suggested preclinically to have neuroprotective effects. Among these drugs are monoamine oxidase (M Read More

Tension-type headache and migraine are currently considered the second and third most frequent human diseases. Since a variety of conditions that involve the temporomandibular joint and chewing muscles are frequent causes of orofacial pain, the aim of this article was to review current published evidence about the potential relationship between gum-chewing and headache. A systematic electronic search performed on Read More

Chronic ethanol exposure is known to cause neuronal damage in both humans and experimental animal models. Ethanol treatment induces neurotoxicity via the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), while anthocyanins (extracted from black soybean) and ascorbic acid (vitamin C) are free radical scavengers that can be used as neuroprotective agents against ROS. In this study the underlying neuroprotective potent Read More

Introduction: The immunopathogenesis of multiple sclerosis (MS) is a main field of research, together with the mechanism of action of most immune therapies in this disease, such as interferon beta. Interleukin (IL)-17 is considered to play a central part in the initial immune cascade in MS, though there are numerous interactions between other cytokines that might explain the heterogeneity of disease evolution and trea Read More

Neuropsychiatric symptoms in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected patients may be a late complication of efavirenz treatment. This study: 1) assessed the level of neuropsychiatric symptoms in HIV-infected patients on long-term efavirenz therapy; 2) explored the effect of a switch to non-efavirenz containing anti-retroviral treatment on neuropsychiatric symptoms. A consecutive series of 47 HIV-infected parti Read More