A new treatment developed by American researchers could help reverse chemical imbalances caused in the brain by habitual drug use. A small revolution when we know that the planet has about 27 million drug addicts.
Drug addiction refers to a physical and / or psychological dependence on one or more chemical substances, often harmful. L’World Health Organization (WHO), characterizes the substance addiction by four elements: an irrepressible desire to consume a product, the tendency to increase the doses, a psychological dependence and sometimes physical, and harmful consequences on daily life, economic and social.
According to last report of the French Observatory for Drugs and Drug Addiction (OFDT), France has 47 million alcohol experimenters, including 5 million daily users, 14 million smokers, 1.4 million regular cannabis users, 2, 2 million cocaine experimenters, 1.7 million of ecstasy and 600,000 heroin. There are approximately 27 million drug addicts in the world, more than the population of a country like Australia.
Source: OFDT 2017 report
Disruption of brain chemistry
New treatment developed by researchers at the University of Texas at Galveston, USA, may help reverse chemical imbalances in the brain caused by habitual drug use and may one day help addicts recover . Their results were published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.
When a person becomes accustomed to using drugs, their brain chemistry is altered so that it is more difficult for them to stop using them despite negative consequences. Once she has developed this brain disorder, her mind pays more attention to the cues that encourage drug use, making it more difficult for her to abstain. Serotonin, a neurotransmitter (i.e. a substance that transmits nerve impulses between neurons), plays a key role in these changes and no drug can to date correct this chemical imbalance.
Serotonin, the key to weaning?
UTMB pharmacology and toxicology professors Jia Zhou, Kathryn Cunningham and their colleagues have found that serotonin receptors in drug addicts do not work as well as they should. They then designed, synthesized and evaluated a series of small therapeutic molecules to restore signaling. To test their treatment, they trained rats to press a lever in order to receive cocaine by infusion. Once the rodents had memorized this gesture, half of them received the treatment and the other half, a saline solution.
As a result, rodents treated with the new drug squeezed the lever much less often than those treated with the saline solution. “We are the first to show that a serotonin receptor can be used successfully to decrease drug-seeking behavior,” explains Kathryn Cunningham, director of the Center for Addiction Research at UTMB.
“Our findings are particularly exciting because, in addition to one day helping people recover from drug addiction, the altered functioning of the serotonin receptor would also help to solve other chronic health problems such as depression, impulsivity, obesity and schizophrenia “. And Jia Zhou concluded, “We look forward to the time when we can start clinical trials so that this treatment can help people get free from drug addiction and other health problems.”
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