ArticleNeuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology2016
Statins Reduce the Risks of Relapse to Addiction in Rats.
Article in Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 23 citations in OpenAlex.
- Lack of effects of simvastatin on smoking cessation in humans: A double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical study.Scientific reports · 2018Trial
- Lovastatin Potentiates the Function of α7-Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptors.Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- MCSG: A Method for Simultaneous Disproportionality Analysis and Background Rate Estimation in Large Pharmacovigilance Databases.Drug safety · 2026Article
- Dynamic Regulation of Cholesterol Metabolism Genes in Dopaminergic Neurons following Methamphetamine Treatment as Revealed by Single-Nucleus RNA Sequencing.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Cocaine Self-Administration Differentially Modulates the Content of Cholesterol, Progesterone, and Testosterone in the Brain and Plasma of Male Rats.Neuroendocrinology · 2025Article
- Adverse neurobehavioral changes with reduced blood and brain cholinesterase activities in mice treated with statins.Veterinary world · 2024Article
- Cholesterol modulation of interactions between psychostimulants and dopamine transporters.Advances in pharmacology (San Diego, Calif.) · 2024Article
- Simvastatin Blocks Reinstatement of Cocaine-induced Conditioned Place Preference in Male Mice with Brain Lipidome Remodeling.Neuroscience bulletin · 2021Article
- Anti-stress neuropharmacological mechanisms and targets for addiction treatment: A translational framework.Neurobiology of stress · 2018Review
- Persistent Neuroadaptations in the Expression of Genes Involved in Cholesterol Homeostasis Induced by Chronic, Voluntary Alcohol Intake in Rats.Frontiers in molecular neuroscience · 2018Article
- Hepatic, lipid and genetic factors associated with obesity: crosstalk with alcohol dependence?The world journal of biological psychiatry : the official journal of the World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Statins are drugs that have been used for decades in humans for the treatment of hypercholesterolemia. More recently, several lines of evidence demonstrate that statins, in addition to their peripheral effects, produce a wide variety of effects in the brain and may be beneficial in neurological and psychiatric conditions. In this study, we allowed rats to self-administer cocaine for several weeks and, at the end of self-administration training, we treated them with low doses of statins daily for a 21-day period of abstinence. Chronic administration of brain-penetrating statins, simvastatin (1 mg/kg) and atorvastatin (1 mg/kg), reduced cocaine seeking compared with vehicle, whereas administration of pravastatin (2 mg/kg), a statin with low brain penetrability, did not. Importantly, the effects of brain-penetrating statins persisted even after discontinuation of the treatment and were specific for drug seeking because drug taking was not altered by simvastatin treatment. Finally, the effects of simvastatin were found to generalize to another drug of abuse such as nicotine, but not to food reward, and to reinstatement of cocaine seeking induced by stress. These results demonstrate that brain-penetrating statins can reduce risks of relapse to addiction. Given their well-known safety profile in humans, statins could be a novel effective treatment for relapse to cocaine and nicotine addiction and their use could be implemented in clinical settings without major health risks.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.