A Cocaine Vaccine?
October 6, 2009 by Marijke Durning, RN
Filed under Addiction
Researchers are working on a vaccine to prevent cocaine addiction and they’re making progress. Is this a good thing or a waste of time and resources?
Between two and three million people in the United States are addicted to cocaine and about one-third of drug-related emergency room visits are the result of cocaine use.
Treating cocaine addiction is not easy. There aren’t any medicines that can help overcome the addiction; detoxification is the mainstay treatment. If a vaccine was available, researchers feel they could reach more than the approximately 800,000 addicts who receive treatment now.
The hope of researchers is that a cocaine vaccine will cause a high level of anticocaine antibodies, which will reduce the feelings of euphoria that cocaine causes. To test this, researchers in Connecticut undertook a 24-week study of 115 patients who used cocaine. The group was divided into two; 57 received placebo and the other 58 received the vaccination in five doses over 12 weeks.
The results showed that 38% of the patients who received the vaccine did get high enough levels of cocaine antibodies, making them less likely to react to the effects of cocaine. Fifty-three percent of the patients who had high antibodies (the 38%) used half as much cocaine as before.
What do you think about this?
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Image: StockXchng.com
