May 13, 2013

Cocaine Vaccine For Addiction Works In Animal Trials - Humans Next

May 10th, Medical Daily, Jonathan Weiss reported on a potential vaccine for cocaine addition.  “Cocaine addiction is a problem affecting more than one million Americans, leading them to physical and financial ruin. But a new hope is in the works to prevent addicts from falling off the wagon. Researchers at Weill Cornell medical College in New York City have just completed trials on primates, showing that after vaccination and cocaine treatment, the drug never made it to the brain. The results were published in the Nature journal Neuropsychopharmacology.”

“A positron emission tomography (PET) scan of the primates was able to detect that there was a large drop in the detection of the tracer in nonvaccinated test subjects but not vaccinated subjects. This means that the vaccine prevented cocaine from entering the brain and binding to receptors.”