slimvictor
Bluelight Crew
http://www.latimes.com/science/scie...-addiction-20141104-story.html?track=lat-pick
Designing medications and immune therapies that blunt a drug addict's high and help him kick his habit is a promising idea. And someday soon it is expected to yield actual medications for addiction. But there's a fundamental problem with prescribing an addict a daily medication that makes it impossible to get high: when the urge to use overwhelms the urge to quit — as it so often does — the struggling addict can easily discontinue the medication and go back to his illicit habit.
A new approach aims to prolong the effect of such anti-addiction medications and make it harder for recovering addicts to abandon their therapy. It would deliver genes into a methamphetamine addict's cells on the backs of a dismembered virus, and prompt those cells to make a continuous supply of anti-meth antibodies.
Weeks or even months after getting a dose of medication, if the temptation to return to methamphetamine wins the day, a standing army of antibodies binds to the illicit drug and prevents it from reaching an addict's brain.
No high, no rush of dopamine to the brain, no psychologiocal reward for using. Instead of descending back into addiction, the recovering meth addict gets another chance to stay clean.
A paper presented Tuesday at the annual meeting of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists offered evidence that such a strategy could work. Molecular biologist Eric Peterson of the University of Arkansas described an experiment in which meth-addicted mice got an antibody therapy that continued to keep methamphetamine from reaching their brains 50 days after they got their dose.
Designing medications and immune therapies that blunt a drug addict's high and help him kick his habit is a promising idea. And someday soon it is expected to yield actual medications for addiction. But there's a fundamental problem with prescribing an addict a daily medication that makes it impossible to get high: when the urge to use overwhelms the urge to quit — as it so often does — the struggling addict can easily discontinue the medication and go back to his illicit habit.
A new approach aims to prolong the effect of such anti-addiction medications and make it harder for recovering addicts to abandon their therapy. It would deliver genes into a methamphetamine addict's cells on the backs of a dismembered virus, and prompt those cells to make a continuous supply of anti-meth antibodies.
Weeks or even months after getting a dose of medication, if the temptation to return to methamphetamine wins the day, a standing army of antibodies binds to the illicit drug and prevents it from reaching an addict's brain.
No high, no rush of dopamine to the brain, no psychologiocal reward for using. Instead of descending back into addiction, the recovering meth addict gets another chance to stay clean.
A paper presented Tuesday at the annual meeting of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists offered evidence that such a strategy could work. Molecular biologist Eric Peterson of the University of Arkansas described an experiment in which meth-addicted mice got an antibody therapy that continued to keep methamphetamine from reaching their brains 50 days after they got their dose.
