Jazzmine Myers

Developing Biomarkers for Methamphetamine Addiction

 

Jazzmine Myers

There are many different factors that drive relapse such as, stress, drug-associated cues and allostatic load but there are no reliable clinical signs or symptoms that can predict relapse¹. This situation also applies to many diseases. Therefore, in the absence of pathomnemonic signs or symptoms of disease activity, biomarkers are used to assess disease-associated biological parameters. A biomarker is a “characteristic that is measured and evaluated objectively as an indicator of different biological processes, pathogenic processes or pharmacologic responses to a therapeutic intervention”. It is important to discover biomarkers because without them it is impossible to develop addiction pharmacotherapies.

Pharmacotherapy trials aim to find a medication that decrease illicit drug use¹. Testing for drugs or a drug in the urine is a standard non quantitative tool for measuring drug abuse. The purpose of this study is to find a quantitative tool that can detect a reduction in drug use or three day abstinence in people who continue some use. This is important because a 90 percent reduction in drug use is required before a modest reduction in urinalysis-positive results could be expected.

One of the methods used to estimate the quantity of illicit drug exposure involve administration of a small amount of pharmacologically inactive doses of deuterium-labeled l-methamphetamine (l-MA-d3) ¹. The subjects are given the biomarker 5mg of I-MA-d3 daily in addition to the experimental treatment medications. A urine sample is collected at each biweekly visit. A timeline-follow-back procedure is used to approximate ingestion time of the last illicit drug.

Another method is measuring Brain Derived Neurotropic Factor (BDNF) as a biomarker in Methamphetamine addiction¹. BDNF may be a useful indicator for potential neuroplasticity and BDNF levels are lower in depressed individuals. Many addictive drugs can increase or decrease BDNF levels. After 30 days of sobriety in methamphetamine addicts, serum BDNF levels were increased.  However, there is no data available in active methamphetamine addicts.

 The new development of biomarkers can benefits many clinical trailists¹. This is beneficial because of the addition of new, objective and quantifiable outcome measurements that reflect disease severity and recovery from addiction. This can also improve patient care and clinical trial decision making.

Reference:

1.      Mendelson, John, Matthew J. Baggott, Keith Flower, and Gantt Galloway. "Developing Biomarkers for Methamphetamine Addiction." National Center for Biotechnology Information. U.S. National Library of Medicine, 30 Aug. 0005. Web. 09 June 2013. <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3137160/>.