National Taiwan University (NTU) yesterday said a research team, in collaboration with researchers from Taichung Veterans General Hospital and a US medical equipment manufacturer, developed a noninvasive radiosurgery system that has shown potential for treating alcohol addiction in animal experiments.

Research project leader Yeh Chun-i (葉俊毅), an assistant professor at NTU’s Department of Psychology, said that alcohol is the most widely abused substance and accounts for about 91 percent of substance addiction cases, as studies suggest about 10 percent of people with long-term alcohol use might develop an addiction.

People with alcohol addiction might find themselves unable to control compulsive alcohol drinking, and it could lead to negative health and societal effects, including increased risk of cancer, liver disease and depression, as well as drunk driving, job loss, divorce and damaged family relationships, he said.

Common treatments for alcohol addiction are medication and cognitive behavioral therapy, but the effects are still limited, so some studies are turning to noninvasive neuromodulation to treat addiction, Yeh said, adding that their team developed a stereotactic radiosurgery therapy.

The therapy can deliver a low dose of acute radiation to a certain area of the brain to alter neural activity, and the low dosage is relatively free from harming the brain, he said.

Yeh said the team conducted the experiment on three pigs for two years, allowing them to press a button to drink alcohol, and that on average, they had drunk about 1.5 times the average amount as human adults who engage in excessive drinking, causing the pigs to develop an alcohol addiction.

After performing the therapy once on the pigs, the amount of alcohol intake from their voluntarily alcohol drinking reduced by 30 percent in one to three months, and then by 45 percent in seven to nine months, he said, adding that the nucleus accumbens in their brain showed no significant changes, indicating no adverse side effects.

He said that the pigs with alcohol addiction showed lower connectivity between the nucleus accumbens and cingulate cortex, but after receiving the stereotactic radiosurgery, the connectivity was partially recovered.

NTU College of Medicine’s Institute of Medical Devices and Imaging assistant professor Xiao Fu-ren (蕭輔仁), who is also a neurosurgeon at NTU Hospital, said radiosurgery was mainly used for destroying tumors in the brain as a cancer treatment, but the primary finding of their research showed that it has the potential to treat alcohol addiction or other diseases.