Lower folate levels in methamphetamine-induced psychosis: A cross-sectional study

Substance-Induced Psychiatric Disorders, Epigenetic and Microbiome Alterations, and Potential for Therapeutic Interventions

Substance use disorders (SUDs) are complex biopsychosocial diseases that cause neurocognitive deficits and neurological impairments by altering the gene expression in reward-related brain areas. Repeated drug use gives rise to alterations in DNA methylation, histone modifications, and the expression of microRNAs in several brain areas that may be associated with the development of psychotic symptoms. The first section of this review discusses how substance use contributes to the development of psychotic symptoms via epigenetic alterations. Then, we present more evidence about the link between SUDs and brain epigenetic alterations. The next section presents associations between paternal and maternal exposure to substances and epigenetic alterations in the brains of offspring and the role of maternal diet in preventing substance-induced neurological impairments. Then, we introduce potential therapeutic agents/approaches such as methyl-rich diets to modify epigenetic alterations for alleviating psychotic symptoms or depression in SUDs. Next, we discuss how substance use-gut microbiome interactions contribute to the development of neurological impairments through epigenetic alterations and how gut microbiome-derived metabolites may become new therapeutics for normalizing epigenetic aberrations. Finally, we address possible challenges and future perspectives for alleviating psychotic symptoms and depression in patients with SUDs by modulating diets, the epigenome, and gut microbiome.

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy integrated with aligner mediated cleavage strategy for ultrasensitive and selective detection of methamphetamine

New drugs and illicit synthesized mixtures detection at crime scenes is a great challenge for detection method, which requires anti-interference and ultrasensitive methods to detect methamphetamine (METH) in seized street samples and biological fluids. Herein, we constructed a surface-enhanced Raman sensing method based on aligner mediated cleavage (AMC) of nucleic acid for quantitative detection of METH for the first time. This method we proposed relied on AMC to achieve programmable sequence-specific cleavage of METH aptamer linked by gold nanoparticles (METH aptamer-Au NPs), the cleavage product-Au NPs conjugates (cleavage aptamer-Au NPs) would hybridize with complementary DNA (cDNA)-Au NPs, resulting in the aggregation of the Au NPs and concomitant plasmonic coupling effect. Besides, due to the base number of METH aptamer-Au NPs was decreased, the interparticle distance of the Au NPs was shortened, which increased the electric field enhancement factor. Thus, under the irradiation of the laser, rhodamine 6G (R6G) adsorbed on Au NPs generated a strong Raman signal. The detection limit reached 7 pM, the linear range was from 10 pM to 10 nM, and this detection method also showed good anti-interference ability and reproducibility in serum.