What is it about?
Cocaine is a hard drug to stop using given its addicting qualities. The way cocaine affects the brain also makes dependence really hard to treat. Metformin has promising effects in the brain similar to what it does in the liver when treating diabetes. This paper attempts to use metformin as a treatment to prevent cocaine relapse.
Featured Image
Photo by Martin Sanchez on Unsplash
Why is it important?
This study focuses on the symptoms of repeated cocaine use and whether metformin, a diabetes drug, can help reduce them. We found that metformin reduces locomotor symptoms that are associated with cocaine use and that metformin is able to interfere with conditioned preferences to environmental settings where past drug use was used. Metformin is able to interfere with conditioned preferences when cocaine use is more frequently over a shorter period of time.
Perspectives
This article really tries to tackle an issue that is not always spoken about given societal stigmas associated with cocaine or "crack" use. The quickness of cocaine administration makes quitting use quite hard and this article attempts to find an accessible and non-expensive way to treat repeated cocaine use to prevent relapse in the future. Metformin is covered by most insurances and relatively cheap, so this would really make a huge impact for vulnerable populations in need.
Edith Hernandez
University of Minnesota Twin Cities
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Therapeutic effects of metformin on cocaine conditioned place preference and locomotion., Behavioral Neuroscience, February 2025, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/bne0000620.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
