Researchers identify brain region involved in oxycodone relapse Study by Scripps Research scientists suggests future therapies for opioid and alcohol addiction.
July 09, 2024
LA JOLLA, CA Even years after they have recovered, a person who once struggled with alcohol or opioid addiction can relapse and that relapse is more likely to occur during particularly stressful times. Now, Scripps Research scientists have identified an area of the brain that plays a key role in stress-induced oxycodone relapse. Their findings explain why the drug suvorexant, which they previously found to reduce alcohol and oxycodone relapse when administered orally, works so well.
Having a better understanding of the region(s) in the brain responsible for this kind of relapse is incredibly important as we develop treatments for alcohol use disorder and opioid use disorder, says Scripps Research Associate Professor Remi Martin-Fardon, PhD, senior author of the study published in Journal of Psychopharmacology.
Alcohol use disorder includes chronic heavy alcohol use and binge drinking, while opioid use disorder is the chronic use of opioids that causes significant distress or impairment. Both disorders are considered major public health concerns and affect millions of people a year.
Recently, Martin-Fardon's team showed that when alcohol-dependent rats were given the drug suvorexant (Belsomra ), they drank less alcohol and were less likely to experience stress-induced relapse. Similar experiments suggested that it also could prevent opioid relapse elicited by drug-associated cues.
Suvorexant blocks the neuronal signaling chemical orexin. But orexin acts on the brain in multiple ways, and the researchers wanted to better understand which areas of the brain and molecular pathways were responsible for suvorexant's effect on relapse.
In the new study, the researchers focused on opioid-dependent rats that had learned to press a lever to receive oxycodone but then were abstinent from the opioid for at least 8 days.
Then, the researchers developed a system to expose only one small area of the rats' brains, known as the posterior paraventricular nucleus of the thalamus (pPVT), to suvorexant, rather than giving the drug orally which exposes the entire brain to the drug. The pPVT has been previously shown to play a role in stress, eating and drinking. They found that opioid-dependent rats who were exposed to stress and exposed to suvorexant in the pPVT, pressed the opioid-delivering lever less than half as many times as untreated rats. This diminished drug-seeking behavior, even in the face of stress, showed that suvorexant's ability to prevent relapse was due to its action on orexin signaling in the pPVT.
In the past, there has been a lot of focus on the role of other areas of the brain in stress-induced relapse, says Jessica Illenberger, a postdoctoral research fellow at Scripps Research and first author of the new paper. Our work really points the finger at the pPVT, as well as orexin signaling in that brain region, as being important in stress processing and drug-seeking behavior.
Importantly, when the animals were given sweetened condensed milk instead of oxycodone, or when they were reintroduced to drug-associated cues instead of stress, suvorexant in the pPVT did not change their behavior. This suggests that stress-induced oxycodone relapse is mediated by different molecular drivers than stress-induced sugar cravings or other types of oxycodone relapse.
Relapse is a huge problem for people with opioid use disorder and alcohol use disorder and this gets us one step closer to identifying the proper types of treatment to reduce the risk of relapse, says Illenberger.
The team is now carrying out similar experiments in animal models to determine whether suvorexant also acts through the pPVT in cases of alcohol dependence.
In addition to Martin-Fardon and Illenberger, authors of the study, Pivotal role of orexin signaling in the posterior paraventricular nucleus of the thalamus during the stress-induced reinstatement of oxycodone-seeking behavior, include Francisco Flores-Ramirez, Glenn Pascasio, Marissa Franco and Brandon Mendonsa of Scripps Research.
This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (AA026999, AA028549, AA006420, T32 AA007456, DA053443).
Molecular and Cellular Biology Martin-Fardon, Remi
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Researchers identify brain region involved in oxycodone relapse Study by Scripps Research scientists suggests future therapies for opioid and alcohol addiction. 
