How can cannabidiol (CBD) be used to help curb alcohol use disorder (AUD), including withdrawal symptoms for the latter? This is what a recent study published in Neuropsychopharmacology hopes to address as a team of researchers from University of California San Diego investigated the benefits of using CBD for treating AUD. This study has the potential to help researchers, medical professionals, and the public better understand the health benefits of using CBD to treat addiction disorders, including AUD.
For the study, the researchers evaluated the behavioral and neurological responses from using CBD to treat AUD in rats with the goal of ascertaining the former’s effectiveness at treating the latter. A total of 166 rats comprised of 87 males and 79 females were used for the study. The researchers conducted six experiments involving the effects of CBD on alcohol dependence, stress from alcohol seeking, neural activity, alcohol vapor, and blood levels. In the end, the researchers found that CBD presented positive outcomes for mitigating alcohol dependence, including behavioral and neurological impacts.
The study notes, “The present study demonstrates that chronic administration of cannabidiol (CBD) attenuates both behavioral and neurobiological manifestations of alcohol dependence in rodent models. Specifically, CBD reduced alcohol intake and withdrawal symptoms, lowered relapse-like behaviors, normalized neuronal excitability in the basolateral amygdala (BLA), and prevented alcohol-induced neurodegeneration in striatal regions associated with reward and habit formation.”
This study comes as the number of adults in the United States suffering from AUD is estimated to be approximately 15 million, while it is also estimated that approximately 2.5 billion people worldwide consume harmful levels of alcohol.
How will CBD help treat AUD and ither addiction disorders in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: Neuropsychopharmacology, Marijuana Moment
