Drug info - scientists vs. cocaine addiction articles

[searcher]

WASHINGTON - Rats can become drug addicts. That's important to know, scientists say, and has taken a long time to prove. Now two studies by French and British researchers show the animals exhibit the same compulsive drive for cocaine as people do once they're truly hooked.


Only through experiments with addicted animals can scientists eventually learn what makes some people particularly vulnerable to addiction while others can quit at will, addiction specialists say.





Addicted rats also could help uncover new anti-drug therapies.





Until now, scientists have been able to prove that rats will take drugs, even eagerly, but not that they're actually addicted. The new research was published Thursday in the journal Science.





"What confers susceptibility to experimenting and trying drugs may be quite different than what changes your brain and leads to addiction," explained Terry E. Robinson, a University of Michigan neuroscientist. "These articles provide us the approaches and the techniques to ask the latter."





"There's some fundamental shift" between casual drug use and addiction, added David Shurtleff, chief of basic neurological research at the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse. "Your brain has changed and that's manifest as a change in behavior. ... That's something new that's never really been nailed down in an animal model."





Among the ways to know when a rat's hooked: It keeps trying to get cocaine even when each hit comes with an electric shock.





In the French study, rats poked their pointy noses through holes in their cages to trigger injections of cocaine. They were allowed access to the cocaine for three months, much longer than the 10- to 30-day drug-use studies normally done with animals.





Compulsive drug-seeking even in the face of bad consequences is a measure of human addiction. So the researchers devised ways to measure that in animals: routinely cutting off the drug supply and measuring the rats' persistence at poking the supply trigger anyway, seeing how hard they worked to get the drug and noting whether they gave up when their feet were shocked.





Intriguingly, 17 percent of the rats met all three measures and thus were considered addicted — while roughly 15 percent of human cocaine users become addicts, reported lead researcher Pier Vincenzo Piazza of INSERM, France's National Institute of Health and Medical Research.





The British study focused just on the bad-consequences scenario. Rats who used cocaine for longer periods continued to do so even when their feet were shocked, reported Louk J.M.J. Vanderschuren, who led the study at the University of Cambridge. But rats who had used cocaine for a short period quit once they knew the punishment.





Both studies concluded that extended exposure to cocaine is a key to addiction, but Piazza says that must be combined with some underlying genetic vulnerability — to explain why all the rats didn't succumb.





"The huge question for the future, then, is what confers the susceptibility," says Michigan's Robinson.

[dolphinsnow18]

Actually, this is 2 years old but I am posting it because I find the 2cnd paragraph funny as hell.

2cnd pgph:

"The vaccine does not stop the craving for cocaine, but will stop addicts experiencing a high when they take it. "

LMFAO. Why would anyone use if ther is no high? Obviouly the Title is wrong too.


FULL LINK:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3804741.stm

[dreamworld native]

because if there is no high, there is no reason to do cocaine.

[Danc9552003]

^^^^ That's right, but if you still crave it and it doesn't get you high that would be even worse!

[Jatelka]

When posting stories, please post the full text.

There are threads here...

http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/sho...hlight=vaccine

http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/sho...hlight=vaccine

and also an article in the archive...

http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/loc...=1153&catid=38

about this.

[dolphinsnow18]

Originally Posted by Danc9552003

^^^^ That's right, but if you still crave it and it doesn't get you high that would be even worse!

exactly. The vacine doesnt stop the craving. So you will crave it but you wont get high.

[Nature Boy]

That could mean that addicts could turn to other alternatives: crystal meth, heroin etc. There's no quick solution for curbing cocaine abuse. A development such as a cocaine vaccine is worrying. It's a little bit too 1984 for my liking.

[dreamworld native]

Originally Posted by dolphinsnow18

exactly. The vacine doesnt stop the craving. So you will crave it but you wont get high.

after a few times of not getting high, you will start not to crave it as much, until it goes away. the cravings come from mostly from the high.

[frenchywife]

There is actually a drug out there that does stop cocaine cravings and urges. SWIM took the prescribed pills after going to a therapist who specialized in drug abuse counseling and treatment. And SWIM swears they work - the only problem was she really didn't want to stop her drug use, she just wanted to tone it down a bit, so she stopped taking them. SWIM forgets the exact name of these pills, but she remembes they were little green ones - anyone else here of these?

[fnord]

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2...ts_try_to.html



CocaineChemists at Georgia Tech and the Mercer University School of Medicine have been trying to discover a drug that will help cocaine addicts break their habit. The team, led by Dr. Howard M. Deutsch, published their findings today in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.

Their strategy is to make a drug that gives addicts a sensation similar to cocaine without any risk of a deadly overdose. By replacing cocaine with a less dangerous drug, doctors will be able to slowly wean the addicts from their habit. Methadone has been used for years to help heroin addicts quit spiking up. The FDA more recently approved the drug Chantix to help people quit smoking.

Cocaine gets people high by blocking their dopamine transporters. Every time a nerve cell sends a signal, it squirts out a tiny bit of a messenger chemical called a neurotransmitter, then sucks it up again once the message has been sent. Dopamine is one of those messenger chemicals and dopamine transporters are the proteins that suck the dopamine molecules back into the nerve cells once they have done their job. Blocking the transporters causes the dopamine to accumulate in the spaces between their nerve cells and gives the junkie a feeling of euphoria. Cocaine overdoses kill people by blocking their sodium channels, which short circuits their nervous system. The perfect drug would block dopamine transporters the way cocaine does without blocking sodium channels. This would take the edge off from cocaine withdrawal without the risk of a deadly overdose.

When medicinal chemists want to discover a new drug, they sometimes use another drug as a starting point. In this case, the scientists made a bunch of chemicals that have a shape similar to the attention deficit disorder drug methylphenidate. They then tested the family of similar chemicals to see which ones might work. They have not found a drug that works perfectly yet, but they are on the right track.

[markdahman]

Wow! Great article this is very good news! There may be a remedy for the devils drug! Keep us posted on this... plz

[Bio-Cellular Enigma]

It's unfortunate addiction is mostly looked at as biological problem these days. The psychosocial aspects are almost completely ignored. They won't make a dent until those issues are addressed. Poverty, inequality, ennui, the list goes on. Chemists better start consulting with politicians, and vice-versa.

[fnord]

if anyones interested i just uploaded like 15 files on drugs that bind to simile sites that crack does,there in the cocaine or cociane chem section of the archives

[Nagognog2]

I doubt this will get far for the simple reason that they are approaching this to satisfy the high wanted from the cocaine while reducing harm. The politicians (and their puppeteers) don't want the high. They'd be more likely to fund and/or approve a drug that blocks the pleasure of cocaine while making any subsequent attempts to use cocaine to result in such things as terrible pain and vomiting.

You're only supposed to feel high when you do such things as vote for a fascist or machine-gun a Moslem.

[enquirewithin]

It doesn't seen likely that this could work. Methadone only replaces one addiction with an even more long lasting one. There seems to be an assumption that fatal overdosing is the main problem with cocaine-- unless you take it intravenously, cocaine is hard to overdose on. Alslo, it's hard t imagine a drug which would satisfy the craving for coke made from a methylphenidate derivative.

[Lunar Loops]

This from Reuters:

Scientists Find Way to Reverse Effects of Cocaine

Promising Research on Lab Mice Could Lead to Better Treatment for Addicts

LONDON - Researchers working with laboratory mice have found a way to reverse the effects of cocaine on the brain, according to a study published on Thursday that could lead to better treatments for drug addicts.

The researchers focused on the part of the brain they knew was involved with pleasure and addictive drugs and found a way to repress hyperactive cells charged up by cocaine.

Scientists have long studied what parts of the brain are affected by cocaine but this study is the first to identify the mechanism needed to reverse the effects of cocaine, said Christian Luscher, the Swiss researcher who led the study.

"This is the piece of the puzzle that was not known before -- the mechanism a cell uses to get back to normal," he said in a telephone interview.

The study, published in the journal Science, builds on Luscher's earlier research that identified the part of the brain where cells became excited after cocaine use.

The goal this time was to figure a way to reverse the impact of cocaine on receptors in the brain, said Luscher, a neuroscientist at the University of Geneva.

Receptors are the proteins responsible for transferring all information in the brain and which eventually produce feelings of satisfaction and pleasure and play a key role in addiction, Luscher said.

In the study, the team targeted the receptors that go into overdrive after cocaine use.

They found in order to correct the imbalance brought on by cocaine they needed to replace the affected receptors with new ones.

To do this they administered a short burst of stimulation to another set of receptors to repress the hyper-charged cells, Luscher said.

"We have reversed the effect of cocaine and we show how the machinery in the cells has to be engaged in order to be reversed," he said.

The research could make it easier to treat addicts because scientists now know what needs to be done in the brain to modify the effect of drug use, Luscher said.

He also hopes the research will spur others to look at drug addiction as a brain disease and target treatment and studies focused on this.

"This sort of sets the framework for what is needed to reverse the cocaine," Luscher said in a telephone interview.

[gplant]

I saw that on the news

[ladenburg]

As is typical of dumbed-down news articles, little or no useful information is revealed.
My guess was that they're referring to glutamate receptors, which turns out to be correct:
http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/...bs/nn1682.html

[idr0p]

wow swim could never imagine cocaine not feeling good any more

[ladenburg]

On the contrary, I think each time would feel like the first time, and if you decide to quit, there would be no craving or drug-seeking compulsion (resulting in relapse).

This isn't the cocaine "vaccine" you may have heard of.

On the other hand, one might ask how the treatment would affect other reward-seeking behaviours, such as the desire for food, sex, entertainment, etc.

[eltimmy]

>I think each time would feel like the first time

Oh yea? It sounds here like they're actually blocking the effects.

Which is useless.

[dbjay417]

*droolz*

If it felt like the first time every time, and they could knock off the cravings, cocaine would be the best thing EVER.

[enquirewithin]

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2...ble-adhd-.html

By Aaron Rowe, September 05, 2007



A recent study may have allowed seven crack cocaine addicts to live out their wildest dreams. Each of them was paid to test the effects of mixing cocaine with the Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder drug atomoxetine (also known as Strattera).

Many researchers would like to find a drug that can help people kick their cocaine habit. Atomoxetine is a great candidate. It is not addictive, it's already FDA-approved, it's available as a generic (outside the US), and it may offer a sensation similar to a mild dose of cocaine. However, during rehabilitation, patients often relapse and use their drug of choice.

So scientists wanted to find out whether mixing cocaine with the replacement medication might be dangerous. At the University of Kentucky, a team led by William Stoops and Craig Rush performed an experiment to answer that question.


While hooked up to a heart monitor, volunteers did four lines of blow and then fill out a questionnaire. Over several weeks, each test subject repeated the experiment five times. During three of those sessions, they were also under the influence of atomoxetine.

The ADHD medication enhanced the increase in heart rate brought on by cocaine, but not enough to be a cause for concern. Unfortunately, it also did not consistently block the enjoyable effects of the illicit drug.

Stoops and Rush will publish their findings in an upcoming issue of Drug and Alcohol Dependence (it's now available online in pre-print). They concluded that the combination is safe, but that further studies are necessary to learn whether atomoxetine can help junkies give up their addiction.

Even if the medication proves ineffective for cocaine users, it may be used to treat marijuana dependence. Three clinical trials, one for kids and two for adults, are underway to test it for that purpose.
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For more detail see here.

[epote]

modafinil has been used in the same way as well