Epigenetic alteration a promising new drug target for heroin use disorder
To narrow in on these alterations, first author Dr. Gabor Egervari and colleagues studied postmortem human tissue -- a challenging but critical endeavor for understanding the molecular organization of the human brain -- from 48 heroin users and 37 controls. They focused on the striatum, a brain region implicated in drug addiction because of its central role in habit formation and goal-directed behavior. The acetylation changes were observed at genes that mediate glutamatergic function, specifically the glutamate receptor gene GRIA1, which has previously been implicated in drug use. The epigenetic impairments reflect changes that increase accessibility of chromatin, a process that enhances gene transcription, suggesting the impairments play an important role in addiction behavior. "At this time, when prescription opioid use and opioid overdoses are both major threats to our public health, it is important to identify new treatment targets, such as epigenetic processes, that he...