A medication currently used to treat type 2 diabetes and obesity may also prove useful in the treatment of alcohol use disorder (AUD).\u00a0 A group of researchers in Sweden found that the drug, liraglutide, inhibits alcohol\u2019s effect on dopamine production in the brain. Doing so makes drinking less pleasurable, decreasing the motivation to drink.\u00a0 Liraglutide is an analogue for the hormone GLP-1, which is involved in hunger regulation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe GLP-1-like substance reduced the alcohol consumption by 30-40 percent in rats that drank large quantities of alcohol for several months\u201d said Elisabet Jerlhag, researcher at Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, in a press release.<\/p>\n
A previous study<\/a> published in June 2015, in which Jerlhag was a co-author, also looked at GLP-1 as a potential therapeutic target for the treatment of AUD.\u00a0 The researchers found evidence that GLP-1 could reduce alcohol consumption, especially in a certain subpopulation of people with AUD.<\/p>\n \u201cThe results of the present study suggest that the physiological role of GLP-1 extends beyond glucose homeostasis and food intake regulation and includes modulation of development of alcohol dependence,\u201d said Jerlhag. \u00a0\u2018In addition we suggest that medications that resemble GLP-1 could be used to treat alcohol dependence in humans. This will now be studied further.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A medication currently used to treat type 2 diabetes and obesity may also prove useful in the treatment of alcohol use disorder (AUD).\u00a0 A group of researchers in Sweden found that the drug, liraglutide, inhibits alcohol\u2019s effect on dopamine production … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pgdf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1674"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pgdf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pgdf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pgdf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pgdf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1674"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pgdf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1678,"href":"https:\/\/pgdf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1674\/revisions\/1678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pgdf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pgdf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pgdf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}