Vaccine stops nicotine from reaching the brain, may prevent addiction
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(CBS News) Trying to quit smoking? It's tough - studies suggest 70 to 80 percent of people who try to quit smoke within six months.
That's because nicotine is so addictive, says Dr. Ronald G. Crystal, chairman and professor of Genetic Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City. Crystal's team has announced they've successfully tested a new vaccine that may treat nicotine addiction.
Crystal told HealthPop that many stop-smoking campaigns try to attack the source of smoking, cigarettes, but what his team wanted to do was find a way to block the sensation nicotine provides in the brain that makes smoking so addictive.
"Smoking is a terrible problem in society," Crystal told HealthPop. "It's enormously costly to our society, not only the pain and suffering, but the amount of health care costs. In that sense, it's important for us to develop strategies that in fact will be effective."
His team's vaccine is described in the June 27 issue of Science Translational Medicine. How does it work?
Much like vaccines for diseases that create antibodies to fight infection, the vaccine creates antibodies against nicotine. However, previous attempts at similar vaccines have failed because within a few weeks the antibodies are gone, which won't exactly help people stay smoke-free.
Crystal's team developed a vaccine that contains a virus consisting of a genetic sequence they engineered from a nicotine antibody, and injected it into the liver of mice. The injection genetically modifies the liver to churn out nicotine antibodies, along with other cells it typically makes, thus providing a nicotine antibody "factory" in the body. That suggests the effect won't diminish over time like that of other antibodies. The antibodies then work by targeting the nicotine cells within seconds of exposure and preventing them from reaching receptors in the brain that provide the "chill out" feeling, as Crystal called it.
"The antibodies are little Pac-men that like nicotine and just gobble it up," Crystal said.
When mice are given nicotine, they experience reduced blood pressure and heart activity and appear "chilled out," which suggests the nicotine reached their brains. But mice tested with the new vaccine appeared just as active as they were before, as measured by infrared beams in their cages.
"It's like giving them water - nothing happens," Crystal said. However he added that there was a caveat to his study: "Mice aren't small humans."
Coming off the vaccine's success, next his team plans to test it in rats, then primates, and eventually humans - likely within "a couple years," he said.
In a Cornell press release, Crystal said the vaccine is safe and one day could conceivably be used preventively in people who have never smoked.
Just as parents decide to give their children an HPV vaccine, they might decide to use a nicotine vaccine. But that is only theoretically an option at this point," Dr. Crystal said. "We would of course have to weight benefit versus risk, and it would take years of studies to establish such a threshold."
To find out currently availble options to quit smoking, visit Smokefree.gov.
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Being a former 3-pack-a-day smoker who quit 30 years ago, you can't "try to quit". You either quit or not. "Trying to quit" is setting yourself to failure.
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And as for by fiddlestickawshucks June 28, 2012 2:20 AM EDT below; you really need some psychological help. This political fixation you have can't be healthy. I do hope you don't own a handgun.
First it was smoking; now it's smoking and obesity.
All of this crap is just a smoke-screen (no pun intended) to detract attention from all the crises here in the US.
We have a bunch of politicians who are so inept they can't even agree that the sky is blue.
We have a President who is so impressed with himself, he thinks he has the right to make a decision that will affect every man, woman and child in the US for the rest of their lives.
When he was campaigning he told more lies than a kennel full of dogs has fleas.
When he can't get his way; or if something goes wrong; he invokes Executive Privilege or blames everybody but the Pope for his mistakes.
In light of the past 3 1/2 years of lies, blaming others and his failure to accomplish almost anything...do we really want ONE man structuring the rest of our lives for us.
Don't even bother to consider Congress in this "mandate, because by their own admission; not one of them has read the entire Obamacare bill.
Almost everyone of us has been thrown under the bus by this corrupt, self-serving bought and paid for bunch at one time another, and Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Boehner and his two flunkies; greedy and greedier; plan to continue to try to bring the US to it's knees and either make us the 1% of the Divided States of America or the Divided Socialist States of Obama.
If we don't start thinking for ourselves instead of buying into all the BS politicians spew or continue to vote blindly along "party" lines; we will have no one to blame but ourselves for whatever happens.
Start now; before it's too late.!!!
Also, the president has clearly only been picking his nose in office: ending the war in Iraq, killing Osama Bin Laden, revitalizing the Auto industry (which actually makes huge profits at the moment), turning a profit on TARP (banks repaid $6B more than they owed), and ensuring people can't be denied health insurance due to pre-existing conditions clearly aren't worthy accomplishments.
Bring it on! I would volunteer to being a human guinea pig in their testing.They recently tested the effect or change of chemical levels in the brain using all known drugs. In other words, which chemicals increased, which decreased and which stayed the same. There were only 2 drugs in the test that had a perfect match. The same chemicals in the brain increased or decreased the same EXACT amount. Scientists thought it was a massive mistake and could not possibly be true. It was true. Guess what the two chemicals were-
Heroin and nicotine.
The high is not the same and the withdrawals are not the same, but it is harder than they thought for some people to quit smoking.
When I first read the headling, I was thinking that it probably wouldn't be any different than using the drug Anabuse to treat alcoholism.
Yes, Anabuse does make you sick if you consume alcohol while on it, but you can't have somebody following an alcoholic around at all times making sure they take their Anabuse for the rest of their life. For most alcoholics on Anabuse, they end up craving the alcohol enough that they stop taking their Anabuse.
I don't know of any alcoholic or smoker that consciously thinks, "Oh yes, I want to remain a victim to this addiction for the rest of my life." Most seriously want to quit. But when the craving grabs hold, and gets strong enough, they relapse.
If a "vaccine" was available and they only had to make that decision to quit once, what a relief that would be!!
And maybe, if this trial is successful, others could eventually be developed to help with other, harmful addictions. Alcohol, meth, etc.