{"doi":"10.1038/s41398-024-03061-0","title":"Medial prefrontal neuroplasticity during extended-release naltrexone treatment of opioid use disorder – a longitudinal structural magnetic resonance imaging study","abstract":"Opioid use disorder (OUD) has been linked to macroscopic structural alterations in the brain. The monthly injectable, extended-release formulation of μ-opioid antagonist naltrexone (XR-NTX) is highly effective in reducing opioid craving and preventing opioid relapse. Here, we investigated the neuroanatomical effects of XR-NTX by examining changes in cortical thickness during treatment for OUD. Forty-seven OUD patients underwent structural magnetic resonance imaging and subjectively rated their opioid craving ≤1 day before (pre-treatment) and 11 ± 3 days after (on-treatment) the first XR-NTX injection. A sample of fifty-six non-OUD individuals completed a single imaging session and served as the comparison group. A publicly available [¹¹C]carfentanil positron emission tomography dataset was used to assess the relationship between changes in cortical thickness and μ-opioid receptor (MOR) binding potential across brain regions. We found that the thickness of the medial prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortices (mPFC/aCC; regions with high MOR binding potential) was comparable between the non-OUD individuals and the OUD patients at pre-treatment. However, among the OUD patients, mPFC/aCC thickness significantly decreased from pre-treatment to on-treatment. A greater reduction in mPFC/aCC thickness was associated with a greater reduction in opioid craving. Taken together, our study suggests XR-NTX-induced cortical thickness reduction in the mPFC/aCC regions in OUD patients. The reduction in thickness does not appear to indicate a restoration to the non-OUD level but rather reflects XR-NTX's distinct therapeutic impact on an MOR-rich brain structure. Our findings highlight the neuroplastic effects of XR-NTX that may inform the development of novel OUD interventions.","journal":"Translational Psychiatry","year":2024,"id":441084,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":9,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9506,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1052797,"name":"Xinyi Li","orcid":"0000-0003-3136-4811","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1054272,"name":"Dustin R. Todaro","orcid":"0000-0003-4682-6388","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":919702,"name":"Wen Cao","orcid":"0000-0002-8370-5502","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":341598,"name":"Kevin G. Lynch","orcid":"0000-0002-0426-0323","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":301392,"name":"John A. Detre","orcid":"0000-0002-8115-6343","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":919703,"name":"James Loughead","orcid":"0000-0002-7419-3816","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":346407,"name":"Daniel D. Langleben","orcid":null,"position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":301109,"name":"Corinde E. Wiers","orcid":"0000-0002-2934-8794","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":927448,"name":"Zhenhao Shi","orcid":"0000-0001-5697-2034","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":110,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:01:06.281460Z","pmid":"39237534","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}