UMN faculty member Anna Lee says the preclinical drug sazetidine-A is a “useful research tool.”

By Genevieve Vickers

It’s no secret that cigarettes and alcohol go hand-in-hand. How often have you walked into a bar only to leave smelling like an ashtray?

 

But it turns out addictions to these substances– nicotine and alcohol– may have subtle differences in their effects

on the brain. A recent study by University of Minnesota Anna Lee and her colleagues has brought us closer to defining those differences and maybe closer to a new medication to help treat alcohol addiction.

 

Her National Institutes of Health study, published in February,   looked at drug called sazetidine-A, which is similar to a popular anti-smoking medication Chantix. That drug, when offered to mice in preclinical studies, reduces urges to consume both alcohol and nicotine.

The researchers expected sazetidine-A to have the same effect on both alcohol and nicotine in mice. After all, it had already done so in high doses to rats.

But that was not the case. Sazetidine-A, when given in lower doses to mice, only reduced their alcohol consumption without affecting nicotine consumption. The decreased alcohol consumption happened across the board, no matter if the mice were allowed to binge on the alcohol, drink it steadily or to return to it after abstinence. It also reduced the severity of the mice’s alcohol withdrawal signs.

Sazetidine-A is the only medication, to Lee’s knowledge, that has this only-alcohol-not-nicotine effect. Many similar drugs, like Chantix, reduce both urges to consume nicotine and alcohol.

Why would it be important to discover a drug that only can help treat one addiction, if smoking and drinking so often occur together?

Because sazetidine-A, when compared with Chantix, may hold the molecular secrets to how the same cells in the brain process nicotine and alcohol differently. This, then, will allow scientists to create drugs that target these specific cell functions, she says. And that might lead to specialized medicines targeting alcohol addiction with more precision and fewer side effects.

That’s good news for anyone interested in a pharmacological answer to alcohol addiction. Right now, only three drugs are are commonly prescribed for alcohol use disorder, Lee says, and nobody knows exactly how two of them work. The third’s chemical effects don’t even take place in the brain; the drug  just makes a patient nauseated if he or she drinks.

But a sazetidine-A solution is unlikely to come anytime soon. The drug in its current form is unlikely to make it into the consumer’s hands because of its unpleasant side effects in higher doses, Lee said. So more tests are needed, including clinical trials – in other words, not just mice – are needed before the drug can be refined enough for use.

Still, a new, specialized medication for alcohol use disorder might be sorely needed, and this is a promising lead, she said.