Recent preclinical and clinical studies suggested ghrelin to have an orexigenic role in regulating appetite and energy balance. Preclinical studies also provided support for an important role of ghrelin in the neurobiology of addiction-related reward pathways, affecting the self-administration of alcohol and drugs as well as conditioned place preference. In contrast, clinical data have until now failed to support an association between ghrelin and alcohol craving, possibly due to the fact that these studies have analyzed the pharmacologically inactive, preprohormone ghrelin instead of ghrelin in its active, acetylated form.
