Oxytocin, also popular as love hormone is able to reduce the addiction of methamphetamine according to the latest research from a team of scientists in the United States. The effect of oxytocin on methamphetamine in rats showed the hormone can reduce the craving.
The report is available in the Biological Psychiatry Journal Vol. 81/11, published by Elsevier. The article is titled "Oxytocin Acts in Nucleus Accumbens to Attenuate Methamphetamine Seeking and Demand" reporting the how oxytocin to reduce methamphetamine addiction, based on the research on rats in the lab.
Lead author of the article is the Postdoctoral Researcher from the College of Medicine at University of California, Irvine, Brittney Cox. Co-authors of the paper are Brandon S. Bentzley, Helaina Regen-Tuero, Ronald E. See, Carmela M. Reichel and Gary Aston-Jones, as reported by the EurekAlert magazine of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). In their study, the researchers have found the ability of oxytocin to reduce methamphetamine craving that practically has no cure until now.
"There are virtually no pharmacotherapeutics for methamphetamine addiction," Cox said, who later explained about using oxytocin to reduce methamphetamine addiction. "Our results are important because they support the development of novel, oxytocin-based therapeutics for methamphetamine abuse in humans."
In her research, Cox and the colleagues find the ability of oxytocin to reduce methamphetamine craving in the methamphetamine-addicted rats. Administering oxytocin can help the rats to overcome their addiction behavior.
Methamphetamine is a recreational drug, known as a strong stimulant that induces euphoria. As a neurotoxic substance that affected the dopamine neurons, people who are addicted to methamphetamine will have a long-lasting effect and find it difficult to cure their addiction. However, this research discovered, that administering the addiction can be cured by administering oxytocin to reduce methamphetamine craving.
Oxytocin is a peptide hormone and known as the love hormone, which made the ability of oxytocin to reduce methamphetamine craving in the brain as a natural process. Administering oxytocin is suffice to block the nucleus accumbens, a small brain region implicated in drug addiction, including methamphetamine.
