Vaughn Steele is calling it his "summer of TMS."
For weeks, Steele, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, and members of his lab have traveled to an addiction treatment center in Middletown, Connecticut, where they are administering a non-invasive treatment known as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to patients with treatment-resistant addictions.
TMS uses electromagnetic pulses to stimulate specific areas of the brain, when treating depression and other psychiatric conditions. A coil placed near the patient's head delivers pulses, with the hope of activating or inhibiting certain nerve cells. If successful, the treatment can disrupt addiction cravings and reduce future use.
A team led by Steele is administering TMS to roughly 40 participants who are struggling with either alcohol use disorder (AUD) or opioid use disorder (OUD). Participants are recruited just days after detox and are in the early recovery period of treatment at an in-patient facility. The study is the first of its kind to be administered during the early recovery stages, which are the most dangerous period for relapse, Steele said.
Treatments should wrap up by mid-August. Three months later, after patients have been discharged from the in-treatment facility, researchers will conduct interviews to determine whether the participants have experienced a reduction in the amount and/or frequency of their alcohol or opioid use.
The hope is that resulting data will show TMS may help curb substance use during the early treatment stages for AUD and OUD. TMS has already proven effective in blunting nicotine craving in smoking cessation programs and in treating AUD in an out-patient protocol. Steele has had previous success using TMS to treat patients with cocaine use disorder.
"We'll learn so much this summer about the feasibility and efficacy of TMS as an intervention in in-patient centers for OUD and AUD," he said.
