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Examples of our recent work.
Sugar cubes and opiate withdrawal
Cocaine and amphetamines
Withdrawal and abstinence similarities
Annual recovery meetings
Cigarette smoking cessation
Insights derived from the work of Bart Hoebel and colleagues
Reward homeostasis
Relapse
A genetic role
What we can expect from the future
- Successful translational research does not only involve moving a discovery from bench to bedside, but rather consists of free-flowing movement along a continuum of bedside to bench and bench to bedside. The lab experts often look to clinicians for treatment challenges or insights and the clinicians look to the lab experts for an understanding of what they have seen. This is especially true in the field of addiction. In the 1970s, I began looking for the mechanisms of drug reinforcement and withdrawal. I observed humans in withdrawal who had anorexia and those in prolonged and successful abstinence who had hyperphagia. During this time It became apparent that opiate addicts when involved in the cycle of drug use, withdrawal, craving and back to use – lost all interest in food. This was true also in cocaine and amphetamine addicts. In the US cocaine users often forgot to eat. Amphetamine addicts did not eat very much or even feel the need to eat. Ecstasy users also forgot to eat or even drink water. Through observation and experience, drugs of abuse and the drive for food appeared to be quite related. In fact, drugs and food appeared to compete with the drug predominating. As pioneered by Bart Hoebel, food can become an object of desire and act inmost respects as a drug of abuse. Hoebel reported on phentermine, phen-fen, and stimulant related appetite change and weight loss for decades. All drugs of abuse appear to release dopamine in the nucleus accumbens and when used chronically will produce a down regulation of the dopamine pathways. Hoebel and colleagues produced similar findings for sugar binging in rats. The development of PET studies have allowed us to visualize the D2 changes in cocaine, opioid or alcohol addicts and compare them with those of the morbidly obese. The Gold lab is investigating working models for pathological attachment to eating and food addiction. New pharmacological treatments which interfere with food reinforcement may be the next step.
Mark S. Gold, M.D. is Chairman of Psychiatry, a distinguished Professor, and Eminent Scholar. He is an editor, author, teacher, pioneer, researcher and inventor, working for over 40 years to create models for understanding the effects of drugs on brain and behavior. His models have led to the discovery of new addiction treatments and also yielded new approaches to the treatment of addictions. Dr. Gold’s seminal work on cocaine is considered classic translational science. Over the past decade he has pioneered hedonic overeating as an addiction and developed animal and imaging models to develop new treatments for overeating and obesity.