Papers of the Week

Alcohol use disorder (AUDs) commonly co-occurs in patients with chronic pain, and a major barrier to achieving abstinence and preventing relapse is the emergence of hyperalgesia during alcohol withdrawal. Elucidating novel therapeutic approaches to target hyperalgesia associated with alcohol withdrawal could have important implications for the treatment of AUD. Here we examined the role of 2-arachidonoylglycerol (2-AG)-mediated endocannabinoid (eCB) signaling in the regulation of hyperalgesia associated with alcohol withdrawal in mice and tested the hypothesis that pharmacological augmentation of 2-AG signaling could reduce hyperalgesia during withdrawal.