Money Matters, Simplified.
Cocaine vaccine may help de-addict: Study
by Jamie Anderson - October 6, 2009 - comments
A new vaccine for nicotine addiction is on the anvil. Legal and financial barriers may, however, prevent the vaccine from reaching the market in the near future
Washington, October 6 -- People who find themselves caught in the swamp of drug abuse and who shirk going for a rehabilitation program have a reason to cheer.
U.S. researchers are well on course to develop a vaccine against cocaine addiction. The said vaccine, still under trail, has the potency to wean users off the drug.
For the purpose of the study, researchers identified 115 cocaine-dependent addicts. Out of these participants, 55 received five vaccination jabs over three months on a random basis. The rest of the addicts were administered dummy placebo injections.
Random tests were carried out to check for signs of cocaine in the addicts' urine.
Production of antibodies achieved
Out of the 55 participants who were administered all five doses of the cocaine vaccine, 38 percent achieved cocaine antibody levels of 43 micrograms per milliliter or higher.
Lead author of the study, Dr Bridget Martell, from the Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut said, ''Optimal treatment will likely require repeated booster vaccinations to maintain appropriate antibody levels.”
“Furthermore, efforts will be needed to retain subjects during the initial series of injections since antibody levels increased slowly over the first three months when patients were immunised according to the protocol used in these studies,” opined Martell.
The urine tests conducted between week nine and week 16 also revealed that 45 percent of the group that had the full dose of the vaccine stopped taking cocaine. In the placebo group, 35 percent of the participants stopped taking the nicotine.
No major adverse side effects of the vaccine were reported. The mild to moderate side effects were those of hardening of the skin at the injection site. No withdrawals or deaths occurred during the course of the study.
Vaccine development in future
As on date, there is no FDA-approved drug which can help an individual get rid of cocaine addiction. Various behavioral therapies have proved successful to varying degrees.
Trials of a vaccine on animal have shown encouraging results. Increasing the levels of anti-cocaine antibodies can confine cocaine in the body but thwarts its delivery to the brain. This process reduces cocaine-induced euphoria without causing any momentous side effect or drug interaction.
The researchers said, ''The goals for future vaccine development will be to increase the proportion of subjects who can attain the desired antibody levels and to extend these periods of abstinence through long-term maintenance of these adequate antibody levels.”
“We look forward to extending our promising findings in a broader population of cocaine abusers as we also reach for these future vaccine development goals,'' promised the team of researchers.
The study has been published in the Archives of General Psychiatry.