A serotonergic biobehavioral signature differentiates cocaine use disorder participants administered mirtazapine

Liangsuo Ma, Kathryn A. Cunningham, Noelle C. Anastasio, James M. Bjork, Brian A. Taylor, Albert J. Arias, Brien P. Riley, Andrew D. Snyder, F. Gerard Moeller

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

Cocaine use disorder (CUD) patients display heterogenous symptoms and unforeseeable responses to available treatment approaches, highlighting the need to identify objective, accessible biobehavioral signatures to predict clinical trial success in this population. In the present experiments, we employed a task-based behavioral and pharmacogenetic-fMRI approach to address this gap. Craving, an intense desire to take cocaine, can be evoked by exposure to cocaine-associated stimuli which can trigger relapse during attempted recovery. Attentional bias towards cocaine-associated words is linked to enhanced effective connectivity (EC) from the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) to hippocampus in CUD participants, an observation which was replicated in a new cohort of participants in the present studies. Serotonin regulates attentional bias to cocaine and the serotonergic antagonist mirtazapine decreased activated EC associated with attentional bias, with greater effectiveness in those CUD participants carrying the wild-type 5-HT2CR gene relative to a 5-HT2CR single nucleotide polymorphism (rs6318). These data suggest that the wild-type 5-HT2CR is necessary for the efficacy of mirtazapine to decrease activated EC in CUD participants and that mirtazapine may serve as an abstinence enhancer to mitigate brain substrates of craving in response to cocaine-associated stimuli in participants with this pharmacogenetic descriptor. These results are distinctive in outlining a richer “fingerprint” of the complex neurocircuitry, behavior and pharmacogenetics profile of CUD participants which may provide insight into success of future medications development projects.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number187
JournalTranslational psychiatry
Volume12
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 2022

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Psychiatry and Mental health
  • Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience
  • Biological Psychiatry

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