Kenneth Blum1-3*, Ali Raza1, Tiffany Schultz1, Rehan Jalali1, Richard Green1, Raymond Brewer1, Panyotis K Thanos4, Thomas McLaughlin1, David Baron2, Abdalla Bowirrat5, Igor Elman6, B William Downs1, Debasis Bagchi1,7 and Rajendra D Badgaiyan8
1The Kenneth Blum Behavioral Neurogenetic Institute, Austin, Texas, USA
2Graduate College, Western University Health Sciences, Pomona, California, USA
3Division of Nutrigenomics, Center for Genomic Testing, Geneus Health, LLC., San Antonio, Texas, USA
4Department of Psychology, University of Buffalo, the State University of New York, Buffalo, NY, USA
5Department of Neuroscience and Genetics, Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, Israel
6Department of Psychiatry, Harvard University College of Medicine, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
7Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, South Texas University College of Pharmacy, Houston, Texas, USA
8Department of Psychiatry, South Texas Veteran Health Care System, Audie L. Murphy Memorial VA Hospital, San Antonio, TX, Long School of Medicine, University of Texas Medical Center, San Antonio, TX, USA
*Corresponding Author: Kenneth Blum, The Kenneth Blum Behavioral Neurogenetic Institute, Austin, Texas, USA.
Received: December 26, 2020; Published: January 28, 2021
In 2019, the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention provided vital statistics related to drug overdoses in the United State1. They concluded that in the USA the number of deaths at almost 72,000 was due to 66.6% of opioid overdoses. In fact, the rate is alarming and increasing yearly. To make 2021 even more scary is the daunting effect on increased drug usage due to COVID 19 as a pandemic, albeit the new vaccines. Specifically, in 2020, the death rate from opioid overdoses rose to 13% nationally and in some sates 30%. The common neuromodulating aspects of neurotransmission, and its disruption via chronic exposure of drugs and behavioral addictions, requires further intense research focus on developing novel strategies to combat these unwanted genetic and epigenic infractions as accomplished with heroin addiction by our group. The take home message is the plausible acceptance of the well-established evidence for hypodopaminergia, a blunted reward processing system, reduced resting state functional connectivity, genetic antecedents, anti- reward symptomatology, poor compliance with MAT, and generalized RDS. With this evidence it is conceivable that pursuit through intensive future research should involve an approach that incorporates “dopamine homeostasis”. This required paradigm shift may consist of many beneficial modalities including but not limited to: exercise, pro-dopamine regulation, nutrigenomics, cognitive behavioral therapy, hedonic hot spot targets brain, rTMRS, deep brain stimulation, diet, genetic edits, genetic guided therapeutics, epigenetic repair, amongst others. It is our opinion that nutrigenomics may assist the millions of people of getting out of a” hypodopaminergic ditch” WC 250.
Keywords: Reward Deficiency Syndrome; Anti reward Symptomatology; Hypodopaminergia; Genetic Addiction Risk Severity (GARS) Testing; Dopamine Homeostasis
Citation: Kenneth Blum.,et al.“Should We Embrace the Incorporation of Genetically Guided “Dopamine Homeostasis” in the Treatment of Reward Deficiency Syndrome (RSD) as a Frontline Therapeutic Modality?”. Acta Scientific Neurology 4.2 (2021): 17-24.
Copyright: © 2021 Kenneth Blum.,et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.