An herbal supplement may be able to curb binge drinking

An herbal supplement made from an invasive species in the southern U.S. could help cut back on binge drinking, a new study has found.

Taking supplements made from kudzu root, which is a vine that originally comes from East Asia, limited the number of days people with alcohol use disorder practiced binge drinking, University of California-San Francisco researchers said.

These benefits were still seen three months after the treatment had ended.

The findings could provide a treatment path for binge drinking, the researchers say. The health condition leads to 178,000 deaths a year in the U.S.

“Binge drinking is incredibly common, but we don’t have many tools to offer people who want to cut back,” Glenn-Milo Santos, the study’s lead author and a professor at the university, explained in a statement. “Our goal is to expand that toolkit.”

While doctors often first recommend behavioral therapy, there is medication to treat alcohol use disorder, including one that causes unpleasant symptoms when drinking, one that blocks receptors that make people feel good when drinking alcohol and another that targets the brain to reduce cravings after stopping.

These medications are typically covered by most health insurance plans, with no or very little copay. The costs of the drugs are typically just over $30 without insurance, The Independent’s review of products sold online shows.

But just 10 percent of people with alcohol use disorder have ever received medication to treat it, the researchers note.

“What’s exciting about this approach is that people can use it when they know they may be at risk of heavy drinking, rather than taking a medication every day,” Santos said.

The study included 120 adults with alcohol use disorder who binge drank at least once a week. For women, binge drinking was defined as having four or more drinks on one occasion, while men had five or more drinks.

Half of the participants received kudzu extract and half received a placebo that they took for 12 weeks about 2.5 hours before they expected to drink heavily.

By the end of the treatment – which also included brief weekly counseling sessions – the number of binge-drinking days had fallen from 2.15 to 1.42 per week for people taking kudzu. In the placebo group, they had hardly changed, falling from 2.15 to 2.06 days.

There were similar declines in the proportion of weeks in which participants reported binge drinking, dropping by 30 percent in the kudzu group versus just 7 percent in the placebo group.

These differences continued after the treatment stopped.

“Researchers said reducing alcohol use during treatment may have helped participants rethink their relationship with alcohol and build confidence in their ability to drink less,” according to the university.

No serious side effects were linked to taking kudzu.

Kudzu has been linked to slow blood clotting, kidney problems, liver injury and interactions with birth control, the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and natural medicine Dr. Josh Axe say. In 2020, kudzu supplements from Oregon were recalled because they had the potential to be contaminated with the sometimes fatal bacteria Salmonella.

Kudzu has been used in traditional medicine for more than 2,000 years and supplements are sold online today for just over $30.