What's Up With Nitric Oxide?

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If you are one of those dietary supplement followers, you may have heard of nitric oxide. It’s rumored to have healthy effects concerning weight loss, sports nutrition, heart disease prevention, increased blood flow, and building muscle mass. Although I seriously doubt the scientific evidence in some of these areas (what happened to good old fashioned exercise and a healthy diet?), nitric oxide is a hot new topic in research circles. In fact, in 1998, Robert F Furchgott, Louis J Ignarro and Ferid Murad won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of “nitric oxide as a signaling molecule in the cardiovascular system.”¹
Furthermore, nitric oxide has been found to have very important roles in the immune system. According to Christian Bogdan, a researcher at the Institute of Clinical Microbiology at the Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, “It is involved in the pathogenesis and control of infectious diseases, tumors, autoimmune processes and chronic degenerative diseases”² Additionally, “Chronic expression of NO is associated with various carcinomas and inflammatory conditions including juvenile diabetes, multiple sclerosis, arthritis and ulcerative colitis.”³ So apparently this little gaseous molecule is important.
This week in class we talked about opioid addiction, withdrawal, and tolerance. We learned that when someone uses opioid drugs like heroin, codeine, or morphine, they bind to cell receptors and cause dopamine release in some areas of the brain. This dopamine gives you the euphoric, blissful, painless response. However, after prolonged use of these drugs, the brain chemistry changes to become tolerant to the drugs so larger quantities must be used to obtain the same effects. Furthermore, without the drugs, a person will then have withdrawal symptoms due to the body’s previous adaptations.
So….what does this have to do with nitric oxide? Apparently, along with the many previously mentioned functions, this molecule could also have effects in opioid addiction and withdrawal. According to Yuan Guo et al. a newly researched pathway inside the cell increases nitric oxide concentration which then leads to withdrawal symptoms.⁴
So what does this mean? According to Gerlach et al., a research team focused on nitric oxide’s role in alcoholism, targeting nitric oxide could be a possible treatment for withdrawal symptoms.⁵ Could we selectively target nitric oxide’s effects in the brain and help those with life-threatening addictions by blocking withdrawal?
I don’t think it’s far-fetched to say that maybe someday another group of scientists will earn a Nobel Prize for their work on the peculiar molecule, nitric oxide.
http://troll.me/am-i-a-fan-of-nitric-oxide-no/
1. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1998/illpres/
2. http://www.nature.com/ni/journal/v2/n10/abs/ni1001-907.html
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitric_oxide
4. Guo, Yuan, Wang, Hui-Ling, Xiang, Xiao-Hui, Zhao, Yan. 2009. The role of glutamate and its receptors in mesocorticolimbic dopaminergic regions in opioid addiction. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews. 33, 864-873.
5. Gerlach, M., Blum-Degen, D., Ransmayr, G. Leblhuber, F., Pedersen, V., Reiderer, P. 2001. Expression, but not activity of neuronal nitric oxide synthase is regionally increased in the alcoholic brain. Alcohol and Alcoholism. 36, 65-69.