Chris McCurdy in his lab at the University of Mississippi School of Pharmacy. (UM photo by Kevin Bain)
Users of the medicinal plant kratom are anxiously watching their calendars as Friday, September 30 approaches–the earliest date that the DEA will place two of the plant’s chemicals onto Schedule I of the U.S. Controlled Substances Act. As reported extensively, this classification will effectively criminalize the sale and use of the plant as an herbal dietary supplement.
On one hand, the DEA’s position, supported by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, is that the kratom chemicals are opioids and therefore subject to abuse and pose an imminent hazard to public safety. On the other hand, an estimated 5 million people in the U.S. use kratom medically to relieve pain, depression, anxiety and PTSD, and in recovery from dependence on alcohol or prescription opioids. Over 134,000 people have signed a petition to the White House to override the DEA’s intent to ban these kratom chemicals.
Nick Wing at The Huffington Post reported Monday that and 51 U.S. congressional representatives–including 21 Republicans–have formally petitioned DEA acting administrator Chuck Rosenberg to delay placement of the kratom chemicals onto Schedule I, provide ample time for public comment, and “resolve any inconsistencies with other Federal Agencies regarding the use of kratom.”
In the letter, drafted by Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.-2nd) and Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.-5th), the focus was specifically on the potential for kratom to treat opioid addiction, a medical use that counters the contention by DEA and FDA that kratom or its chemicals have no known medical use.
The letter cites the work of Christopher R. McCurdy, PhD, at the University of Mississippi and Edward W. Boyer, MD at the University of Massachusetts and their work to investigate how kratom is used as a painkiller substitute for strong opioids and in recovery from opioid dependence.
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I caught up with Dr. McCurdy earlier this month to discuss their work and his perspective on the DEA’s notice of intent.
“For years it had been on DEA’s chemicals of concern but we really didn’t think there was going to be any action on it,” says McCurdy. A professor of medicinal chemistry and pharmacology at the Ole Miss School of Pharmacy and their interim chair of biomolecular sciences, McCurdy’s research team has been studying naturally occurring plant chemicals with effects in the brain.
“We were initially interested in finding new analgesics without addictive side effects but we got away from that.” The problem was finding financial support for the studies from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the 27 institutes and centers that comprise the nation’s medical research agency.
At the time, he says that the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) didn’t want to fund the work because they saw medical use of an herbal supplement as alternative and complementary medicine. So, he inquired with program officials at the NIH’s arm for study of supplements, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM, now the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, NCCIH). “But they didn’t want to fund it because they considered it drug abuse research,” says McCurdy.
Fortunately, McCurdy was able to secure some funding from an already existing NIH Center grant at Ole Miss from the National Institute for General Medical Sciences, the Center for Research Excellence in Natural Products Neuroscience.
McCurdy had been well-versed in the previous work on kratom in animal models, particularly that by Hirosuto Takayama and colleagues at Chiba University in Japan. Takayama who was the first to show that mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine could bind to opioid receptors in guinea pigs and mice. Together with Jessica Adkins, McCurdy and Boyer’s published a 2011 review on kratom alkaloids in Current Topics in Medicinal Chemistry, considered a definitive overview of the science up through the beginning of the decade.
“But the compounds in kratom aren’t particularly potent opioids like prescription opioids, morphine or fentanyl. So we started investigating its traditional use from Malaysia where people used it as an opium replacement or to wean themselves off of opium–a different type of methadone or Suboxone (buprenorphine/naloxone) maintenance therapy,” says McCurdy.
