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Binge on drugs? Might be due to germs inside your body.

Do you know that you have germs living inside your body?

You probably hear from the news that you were born with germs (or microbiome) inside your stomach that help you to stay healthy. Also, some germs even protect you from getting diseases.

Not long ago, researchers discovered that there was a mysterious talk between brain cells and the germs inside the stomach. Diaz- Heijtz 1 and colleagues presented the link between anxiety and germs by studying animal model (specifically mice).

In other words, all those germs living inside your stomach may be the reason for “feeling butterflies in the stomach”.

 

Few months ago, there is also another frontier in the field. Besides the effect on the anxiety, Kiraly 2 and his colleagues at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai found out that changing the germ content could reshape the response to pleasure drugs, such as cocaine.

Drug abuse is a huge ongoing public health crisis. Namely, alcohol use leads to organ damages and cancer. It also changes the brain function. Like alcohol, cigarette smoking harms every part of the body. The UN report estimated that 1.3 billions were smokers and 2 billions were alcohol users. Also, 1 in every 20 adults had used an illicit drug, at least once.

http://www.who.int/substance_abuse/facts/global_burden/en/

From WHO: Management of substance abuse

Kiraly and his research team noticed that there was a gap in the microbiome research, with a central question in mind: the gut germs affect the behavior under the influence of a drug. They observed that germ-free mice became more attached to cocaine even at low dose.

The research team showed that the part of brain, called nucleus accumbens changed its chemistry due to the alteration of germ proportion.

The nucleus accumbens of the brain instructed the body what to do first based on the need or desire (to feel good). In this study, the presence of germ seems to form more robust response against the addiction.

Of course, these researches were done on animal models. Therefore, the evidence would be inconclusive if taken to human level.

After answering the question “how the germs do that”, scientists could possibly discover the germs potent enough to cure the addiction, easy as ABC!

1  Heijtz RD, Wang S, Anuar F, et al. Normal gut microbiota modulates brain development and behavior. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2011;108:3047-3052.

Kiraly, D. D. et al. Alterations of the Host Microbiome Affect Behavioral Responses to Cocaine. Sci. Rep. 6, 35455; doi: 10.1038/srep35455 (2016).

 

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