Testing the effects of the GLP-1 receptor agonist exenatide on cocaine self-administration and subjective responses in humans with cocaine use disorder

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Exenatide, published as a randomized controlled trial.

The researchers investigated effects of a GLP-1 analogue (exenatide) on behavioral and subjective effects of cocaine in individuals with cocaine use disorder (CUD).

Who Took Part

The age groups tagged for this paper are adults and middle-aged adults, both men and women.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled and crossover.

The participants were allocated by chance, so the Exenatide group and the comparison group should start out alike.

Neither the participants nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Exenatide, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

Some participants received a placebo instead of Exenatide, giving a reference point.

In the crossover set-up each of the participants took both Exenatide and the comparison in turn, acting as their own control.

Primary outcomes consisted of infusions of cocaine and visual analog scale self-ratings of euphoria and wanting cocaine.

Secondary outcomes consisted of pertinent hormone levels (GLP-1, insulin, and amylin).

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Cocaine, Cocaine-Related Disorders, Exenatide, Glucagon-Like Peptide 1, Incretins, Insulin and Islet Amyloid Polypeptide.

Author keywords: Addictive behaviors, Cocaine self-administration, Cocaine use disorder, GLP-1 and Substance-related disorders.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Exenatide.

Its findings take up roughly 7 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2021 (Drug and alcohol dependence), a journal based in Ireland.

More context: the Exenatide compound page, all human trials.