Studying post-mortem human brains of heroin abusers, Yasmin Hurd of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and her colleagues found significant changes in gene networks related to glutamate pathways in the striatum, an area commonly linked to drug use.
Moreover, the researchers found that these differences in gene expression resulted from epigenetic alterations in this brain region, and that these changes were more pronounced among long-term users.
In heroin users, there are clear disturbances of epigenetic mechanisms that directly correlate with their years of drug use,” Hurd said
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Read the full, original story here: The Epigenetics of Drug Abuse
