Research gives new insight into food, drug and alcohol addictions

[Lunar Loops]

This from The Telegraph (UK):
Research gives new insight into food, drug and alcohol addictions

Last Updated: 6:01pm BST 21/05/2008

A new generation of drugs that could curb excessive eating along with alcohol and drug abuse could result from a fundamental new insight into addiction, writes Science Editor Roger Highfield.

A protein that builds up in parts of the brain linked with addiction to cocaine, as well as in response to food, has been found by a team led by Dr Jean-Antoine Girault of INSERM, Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France.
Blocking the process could help treat addictions. Both food and drugs of abuse trigger the accumulation of the protein in the nucleus of brain cells involved in the brain's reward systems, report the researchers from France, Japan and America led by Dr Girault in Nature.

Cocaine and amphetamines induced a rapid accumulation in parts of the brain called the nucleus accumbens and the dorsal striatum that lasted several hours, while morphine led to a build up around the nucleus accumbens.
In principle, the findings are relevant to alcoholism too, he says, though he adds that alcohol "is a messy drug that does many things."
The team made the discovery when they observed that mice with a specific change in this protein called DARPP-32 were less likely to show obsessive food - or drug-seeking behaviour: for example, they gave up more easily in 'nose-poke' trials, in which they have to poke a lever to get food, and the number of pokes required is then increased.
This protein seems to be a key component of a signalling pathway, one overlooked until now, by which the brain learns that such substances give pleasure.
And drugs that can reduce levels of the protein could be useful to treat addictions and alcoholism, though he stressed that practical exploitation of this fundamental understanding is some years away.
"Additional work is necessary to design them. In addition, one should be cautious since such drugs may not be able to "treat" addiction once it is established", says Dr Girault, who is Director of the Institut du Fer à Moulin.