Microbial short-chain fatty acids regulate drug seeking and transcriptional control in a model of cocaine seeking.

ABSTRACT: Cocaine use disorder represents a public health crisis with no FDA-approved medications for its treatment. A growing body of research has detailed the important connections between the brain and the resident population of bacteria in the gut, the gut microbiome, in psychiatric disease models. Acute depletion of gut bacteria results in enhanced reward in a mouse cocaine place preference model, and repletion of bacterially-derived short-chain fatty acid (SCFA) metabolites reverses this effect. However, the role of the gut microbiome and its metabolites in modulating cocaine-seeking behavior after prolonged abstinence is unknown. Given that relapse prevention is the most clinically challenging issue in treating substance use disorders, studies examining the effects of microbiome manipulations

SUBMITTER: Meckel KR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10724273 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature