More than 12 million Americans suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), including a third who have served in the military. About 60% of people with PTSD also have problems with alcohol use, chronic pain or both. Drugs for these problems often don’t work, and there is no medicine that works for all three.
Andrea Cippitelli, Ph.D., is changing that.
The assistant professor of biomedical science at Florida Atlantic University’s Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine and a member of the Stiles-Nicholson Brain Institute (SNBI), is studying an innovative drug that shows promise in simultaneously treating PTSD, alcohol use disorder (AUD) and chronic pain. In a recent study, he found that the drug, PPL-138, significantly reduced symptoms of all three ailments in rats.
“This is really a new approach,” Cippitelli said “We need to do more research, but I think this has the potential to really make a difference.”
Currently, people with PTSD typically take antidepressants or anti-anxiety drugs for their symptoms. But these medicines don’t always work and usually have little or no effect on alcohol use or chronic pain. People with AUD may take drugs such as naltrexone, which can block the effects of alcohol.
Those with chronic pain may take opioids, which can sometimes work, but also pose a significant risk of addiction. “There is no single drug for all three,” Cippitelli said. “That’s why this is so exciting.”
The medicine has a complex mechanism of action: It blocks some categories of opioid receptor (there are four), while activating others. Overall, its main effect seems to be altering the activity of a receptor called the nociceptin opioid peptide (NOP), Cippitelli said. Researchers have found evidence that overactive NOP may play a key role in PTSD, drug abuse, pain and depression.
Cippitelli’s research focuses on addiction – how it changes the brain and what medications can reverse or modify those changes. Although his journey to becoming a scientist nearly halted on his second day as a pharmacology graduate student in Italy. The first day did not go well, he said he did not enjoy handling rats and thought about quitting. But the next day, he had an epiphany. “I kind of became familiar with the animals and with the environment,” he said, laughing at the memory. “And I realized that I loved it. And so, I said to myself, ‘I want to do this for my life.’”