Non-invasive focused ultrasound reduces craving in opioid use disorde
© 2025 EPFL
Opioid use disorder is a major healthcare challenge in the US and an emerging challenge across Europe, with current treatments often falling short in preventing relapse. A study led by our close collaborators at Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute (Prof. Ali Rezai, West-Virginia University, US) explored the safety and feasibility of focused ultrasound (FUS) neuromodulation as a potential new approach to reduce substance cravings and use in individuals with severe opioid and co-occurring substance use disorders.
In this open-label study, eight participants received a 20-minute session of low-intensity FUS at the bilateral nucleus accumbens, a key brain region involved in addiction. Over a 90-day follow-up period, we assessed safety, feasibility, and effectiveness through clinical evaluations, self-reported substance use, urine toxicology, neurological exams, and MRI scans.
The results are highly promising: FUS led to an immediate and sustained reduction in opioid cravings, with a 91% average decrease at 90 days post-treatment. Cravings for other substances, including methamphetamine and cocaine, also declined significantly and , critically, 88% of participants remained abstinent at 30 days and 63% throughout the entire 90-day period. Analyzing brain activity (resting state fMRI) revealed decreased connectivity between the nucleus accumbens and brain regions involved in reward and cognition, suggesting a potential neural mechanism underlying these effects. Future neuroimaging work will be needed to investigate the specificity of these effects, to further optimize the FUS procedure and its personalization (i.e., Stampacchia et al., 2024). No serious device-related adverse events or imaging abnormalities were observed, reinforcing the safety of this approach. These findings are very encouraging and we have started a larger randomized controlled trial to further evaluate the impact of FUS in addiction as well as other disorders.
Stay tuned for updates on our translational research!
https://rni.wvumedicine.org/
Rezai, A., Thompson-Lake, D. G. Y., D’Haese, P.-F., Meyer, N., Ranjan, M., Farmer, D., Finomore, V., Marton, J. L., Hodder, S., Carpenter, J., Bhagwat, A., Berry, J., Tirumalai, P., Adams, G., Arsiwala, T., Blanke, O., & Mahoney, J. J. (2025). Focused Ultrasound Neuromodulation: Exploring a Novel Treatment for Severe Opioid Use Disorder. Biological Psychiatry. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2025.01.001
Stampacchia, Sara, Saina Asadi, Szymon Tomczyk, Federica Ribaldi, Max Scheffler, Karl-Olof Lövblad, Michela Pievani, Aïda B. Fall, Maria Giulia Preti, Paul G. Unschuld, Dimitri Van De Ville, Olaf Blanke, Giovanni B. Frisoni, Valentina Garibotto, and Enrico Amico. 2024. ‘Fingerprints of Brain Disease: Connectome Identifiability in Alzheimer’s Disease’. Communications Biology 7(1):1–16. doi: 10.1038/s42003-024-06829-8