Abstract
Substance use disorder (SUD) is a prevalent disease that has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and affected the lives of even more. Despite its global impact, there is still no known cure for SUD, or the psychological symptoms associated with drug use. Many of the behavioral consequences of drug use prevent people from breaking the cycle of addiction or cause them to relapse back into the cycle due to the physical and psychological consequences of withdrawal. Current research is aimed at understanding the cause of these drug related behaviors and therapeutically targeting them as a mechanism to break the addiction cycle. Research on opioids suggests that the changes in the microbiome during drug use modulated drug related behaviors and preventing these microbial changes could attenuate behavioral symptoms. This review aims to highlight the relationship between the changes in the microbiome and behavior during opioid treatment, as well as highlight the additional research needed to understand the mechanism in which the microbiome modulates behavior to determine the best therapeutic course of action.
Highlights
Research shows a drug induced dysbiosis of the gut microbiome, causing the diverse microbial environment to become overpopulated with pathogenic bacteria [35,36]
While the microbiome is activating an inflammatory response, it communicates with the vagus nerve to send signals to the brain [55,56]
The microbiome may be responsible for the increase in microglial activation as well as dysregulation of BDNF signaling during drug use [52,68,74]
Summary
There is a well-studied relationship between the gut microbiome and mental health disorders such as anxiety and depression [1–3]. Like anxiety, cause disruptions to the integrity of the gut barrier, which can allow translocation of gut bacterial products, commonly referred to as “leaky gut” [7,8] This likely results in a microbiota-driven proinflammatory response. Antibiotic treatment does not affect anxiety-like behavior in germ-free mice, confirming behavioral changes are due to changes in the microbiome. Initial drug is often used as a form of self-medication to alleviate stress and anxieties [29] These effects of opioids are short lived, and consumption of drugs can lead to increased depression symptoms instead [30]. The implication of microbiome in these behaviors are especially interesting considering the impact that opioid use has on the gut microbiome
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