A safer psychedelic drug to treat depression and addiction? :shot

Root extracts from the African shrub Iboga have long been used in traditional healing rituals and have recently been used as an treatment for depression and to reduce drug cravings in addiction. I have come. Scientists are currently working on a version of the extract that does not cause heart attacks or hallucinations as a side effect.

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Root extracts from the African shrub Iboga have long been used in traditional healing rituals and have recently been used as an treatment for depression and to reduce drug cravings in addiction. I have come. Scientists are currently working on a version of the extract that does not cause heart attacks or hallucinations as a side effect.

Steve Jordan / AFP via Getty Images

Chemically A fine-tuned version of the psychedelic drug Ibogaine appears to relieve the symptoms of depression and addiction without causing hallucinations or other dangerous side effects.

The results of rodent studies suggest that psychedelic drugs may be safe enough to become the mainstream treatment for mental illness, the authors say. report Journal wednesday Nature.

“We need a drug that is as safe as aspirin that we can take home and put it in the shelves,” he says. David Olson, The lead author of the treatise and an assistant professor at the University of California, Davis. “And that’s what we were trying to achieve.”

Success at Ibogaine is a “promising first step” Gabriella Manzano, Postdoctoral fellow at Weil Cornell Medicine in New York, Commentary About research.

“This provides a roadmap on how to adjust these compounds to make them very useful in the clinic,” she says. “Leave the good parts and remove the bad parts.”

For decades, psychedelic drugs such as ketamine and psychedelic have been shown to be promising in the treatment of people with addiction, depression, and mental disorders such as PTSD. However, doctors and researchers were cautious about using the drug because of its side effects.

Olson’s team chose ibogaine because it seems to have the most difficult side effects, such as hallucinations and potentially fatal heart problems. Also, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find plants that naturally contain ibogaine, making it difficult to produce large quantities of synthetic versions of the drug.

These obstacles make Ibogaine “Mount Everest in Psychedelics,” Olson says.

However, Ibogaine, which originates from the roots of shrubs in West Africa, also has great potential, Olson said. Small studies suggest that drug cravings and withdrawal symptoms can be dramatically reduced.

So Olson and his team sought to answer the question, “Can a very complex molecular structure like ibogaine be distilled to the essential elements that produce beneficial effects?” ..

The team started by giving the ivogaine molecule some nip and tack.

“We cut off the parts of the structure that caused many harmful effects, and left the parts of the structure that were able to maintain their addictive and antidepressant properties,” he says. ..

These changes have resulted in substances that are not only safer, but also easier to manufacture. Scientists have named their creation tabernanthalog, or TBG.

The team has begun testing TBG on rodents. This includes mice raised for heavy drinking of alcohol. “All the animals that participated in the experiment reduced their alcohol consumption, which was really amazing,” says Olson.

TBG also helped heroin-addicted rats. Usually, these rats relapse in response to light or sound cues taught to be associated with the drug. However, rats given TBG were much less likely to relapse.

Finally, the team tested TBG in mice with depression-related behaviors. Those symptoms improved.

None of the animals given TBG experienced hallucination-related heart problems or behaviors.

Olson, who has a financial stake in TBG, says that drugs based on psychedelic substances have great potential because they work differently than most traditional medications.

“They don’t hide the symptoms of the disease,” he says. “They are really designed to try to rewire the brain.”

However, it is still unclear whether tripless synthetic versions of hallucinogens will work as well as their natural counterparts.

“One of the big problems in this area is the hallucinatory experience needed to get better,” he says. Dr. Connor Liston, Associate Professor of Neuroscience and Psychiatry at Weill Cornell, and another author of TBG Commentary. “There is some evidence in both ways.”

Anyway, Liston says it’s time for scientists to finally understand what psychedelic drugs and their tripless counterparts can do for people with depression, addiction, PTSD and other disabilities. I will.

“Collect data, see what works, and make sure you understand your safety profile,” he says. “But let’s also open up the possibility that these compounds can really help many people in need.”