Arecoline is a naturally occurring psychoactive alkaloid found in the pericarp (seeds) of Areca nuts of the areca palm (Areca catechu). Arecoline, arecaidine, guvacine, and guvacoline are the most important and prominent alkaloids found in the areca nut. Nicotine, dichroine, acatechu A, acatechu B, homoarecoline, N-ethyl-1,2,5,6-tetrahydro-1-methyl-3-pyridine carboxamide and arecatemines are some of the minor alkaloids found in areca nuts. Arecoline is found to be the most important alkaloid among all, due to its role in modulating many physiological functions upon human consumption. It is found to enhance alertness and learnability, enhance the mood, gives a feeling of great pleasure, causes awakening, stimulates the sexual desire, reduces anxiety and promote calmness.
Arecoline has a wide spectrum of pharmacological effects beyond Central Nervous System modulating cardiovascular, digestive and endocrine systems as well. Like nicotine, arecoline also evokes addiction and withdrawal symptoms (upon discontinuation). Withdrawal symptoms could be mood swings, anxiety, irritability and insomnia. Due to its addictive nature and activity on central nervous system, it has become the fourth most commonly used human psychoactive substance after alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine. How arecoline is converted to other forms, and disposed in the human body is complex and poorly understood.
Liu & Chang have listed the therapeutic values of arecoline in their review article “The Controversial Roles of Areca Nut: Medicine or Toxin?” published in International Journal of Molecular Sciences. They concluded that arecoline and areca nut extracts can be used for developing alternate therapy for gastroesophageal reflux disease & can be used to stop the progression of hepatocellular carcinoma cells (liver cancer) and the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, eliminate the negative symptoms of psychosis, can be used as various types of worms (take worm, liver fluke, pin worms etc.). They observed that arecoline possesses anxiolytic-like activity.
Volgin and coworkers have concluded that arecoline and related compounds have a considerable potential in medicine with multiple positive neural effects, in their scientific review published in “ACS Chemical Neuroscience” (An American Chemical Society Journal). They went on to propose that Arecoline can be used effectively in neurology and psychiatry. They opined that further translational research is needed to focus on molecular mechanisms of arecoline pharmacology in both clinical and animal models, and to develop low-risk analogues of this drug for future clinical uses.
References:
Liu & Chang (2023). The Controversial Roles of Areca Nut: Medicine or Toxin?, International Journal of Molecular Science, Vol. 24, 8996.
Volgin et al. (2019). DARK Classics in Chemical Neuroscience: Arecoline, ACS Chemical Neuroscience, Vol. 10 (5) 2176–2185.
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