Pomegranate juice ameliorates craving and oxidative stress on patients under medication for opioid addiction treatment with methadone and buprenorphine: A ranzomised controlled trial.

Background & aims: Buprenorphine and methadone are drugs used as medication for addiction treatment for patients with opioid use disorders (OUDs). However, scarce evidence indicates that they induce oxidative stress, which contributes to the deterioration of psychosocial parameters, thus complicating successful rehab. Therefore, a dietary antioxidant intervention such as pomegranate could be beneficial for that group of patients. Therefore, the aim of this study, whose protocol has been registered in the international database ClinicalTrials.gov (Identifier: NCT05861544), was to examine the putative beneficial role of consumption of natural pomegranate juice that possesses potent antioxidant properties on craving, a psychosocial parameter of utmost importance, and blood redox status of patients with OUDs.

Methods: The juice was administered at the following dosage: 250 ml/day, 7 days/week, 120 days. The heroine craving questionnaire was completed to assess craving and blood was collected by the volunteers at three time points, namely days 1, 60 and 120 and well-established redox biomarkers were measured in blood.

Results: Overall, craving of all patients was improved due to the nutritional treatment applied. Moreover, their blood antioxidant potential was enhanced due to pomegranate juice consumption.

Conclusions: As a conclusion, the obtained evidence is promising, thus, it appears that pomegranate juice consumption could be considered as an auxiliary nutritional intervention in parallel with medication towards rehab of opioid-addicted patients.