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Updated: Jul 3, 2026

Investigating Drivers of Antireward in Addiction Behavior with Anatomically Specific Single-Cell Gene Expression Methods
Published on: August 4, 2022
Association of dopamine and opioid receptor genetic polymorphisms with response to methadone maintenance treatment
Séverine Crettol1, Jacques Besson, Marina Croquette-Krokar
1Unité de Biochimie et de Psychopharmacologie Clinique, Centre de Neurosciences Psychiatriques, Département de Psychiatrie, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois et Université de Lausanne, Hôpital de Cery, CH-1008 Prilly-Lausanne, Switzerland.
Background:
Genetic variations of the dopamine and opioid receptors could influence the response to methadone maintenance treatment (MMT).
Methods:
We included 238 MMT patients according to their response to treatment and methadone dosing, along with 217 subjects without substance dependence. All were genotyped for polymorphisms of the dopamine D1, D2, micro-opioid and delta-opioid receptor genes.
Results:
The polymorphisms of the micro-opioid (118A>G), delta-opioid (921T>C), dopamine D1 (DdeI) and D2 (TaqI A) receptor genes were not associated with response to MMT and methadone dosing, whereas an association was found with the dopamine D2 receptor (DRD2) 957C>T polymorphism. The 957CC carriers were more frequently non-responders to treatment (OR=2.4; p=0.02) and presented a fourfold shorter period of negative urine screening (p=0.02). No significant differences in allele frequencies were observed between the MMT patients and the control group, suggesting no association of the analyzed polymorphisms with opioid dependence.
Conclusions:
These results suggest that DRD2 genotype may contribute to the understanding of the interindividual variability to the response to MMT.
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