Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Cocaine vaccine




Ok, I'm no music pundit, but this is one of the best Clapton songs - EVER! After you finish watching the SIX and a half minute live version above (including what seems to be a five minute guitar solo), you may proceed with the rest of this post hehe....

So, a vaccine against cocaine. Hmmmm... It is currently in clinical trials right now and researchers have asked the Food and Drug Administration permission to perform a larger trial to continue its progress to possible clinical use. The theory is similar to other vaccines - researchers place an inactive cocaine molecule on a protein so that the body can form antibodies against cocaine. So, when cocaine is ingested, the antibodies gobble them up so they cannot reach the brain for their addictive effect. (AP)
[FDA] Approval would mark a breakthrough in the treatment of cocaine addiction, which now mostly involves psychiatric counseling and 12-step programs. It presumably would be the final clinical hurdle before the vaccine — more than a decade in the making — might be approved for treatment. But one expert warns against expecting too much.

"Addiction vaccines are a promising advance, but it's unlikely any treatment in this field will work for everyone," said Dr. David Gorelick, a senior investigator at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. "Still, if they prove successful, they will give those working in drug addiction an important option."
Who knows, this vaccine may not go anywhere. Certainly, it is years before there's even a possibility that it could be used as any kind of treatment in the real world. However, it is an intriguing possibility that one day, someone in a voluntary cocaine treatment program would be receiving a shot - and hopefully increase the change of sobriety. Fascinating....

5 comments:

A Kipp said...

Call me a naive medical student, but wouldn't it be slightly dangerous to have people immune to cocaine when it is still used (albeit sparingly) in ENT surgeries as an anesthetic? If I remember my pharmacology right (and there's a good enough chance I might not be), cocaine is a pretty unique anesthetic in that it causes vasoconstriction, which is desirable in some ENT surgeries. Wikipedia says that other anesthetics can be combined with vasoconstrictors for a similar effect, but then why do some doctors still use cocaine?

If it's still being used as an anesthetic in hospitals, would it be a great idea to vaccinate people against it? I know in terms of treatment programs, a vaccine against cocaine would be GREAT, but I wonder if this has been/will be addressed throughout the process.

Awesome Mom said...

That is a very awesome song even if it is glorifying a harmful drug.

Margaret Polaneczky, MD (aka TBTAM) said...

Damn, I love that man...

Oh yeah- the vaccine - It'll never work. If they don't get high with the cacaine, they'll just go for something else.

But if someone could vaccinate me against overeating - now that's a vaccine I'd like to see.

Happy New Year!

Just Suzanne said...

Here's my one and only personal experience with cocaine that I didn't even know I'd ingested. lol Seriously.

In 2007 I had to have a carpal tunnel and DeQuervain's release. Not having had much experience with surgery before, other than a Functional Endoscopic Sinus Surgery, I find the idea of being "put under" with anesthesia terrifying, because I know that, frequently, that's the most dangerous part of the surgery.

Anywho, I asked the anesthesiologist if he could just simply give me a nerve block on that side instead of the full deal. He said he could do that, but he didn't think I'd like it much in the end, and wanted to know why I wanted that instead of the normal stuff. I explained that, upon awakening from the FESS, my ENT told me that I "scared them" with my blood pressure during the procedure. I said I was surprised to hear that, since I woke up feeling so amazingly rested and clear.

The anesthesiologist then said that he was 99.99% certain that the reason they had a problem with my BP during the procedure was probably because of the pharmaceutical quality COCAINE they put in my nose/sinuses during the procedure. I found this explanation completely satisfactory and went on with the general anesthesia.

So, I can't say I've *never* tried cocaine, but I can say I never tried it on purpose that I knew of. :D

That's my story and I'm stickin' to it! Happy Friday, all y'all out there in the Blogosphere. :)

Suzanne

Anonymous said...

to anyone that believes this comment:
It'll never work. If they don't get high with the cacaine, they'll just go for something else

I am addicted to IV cocaine and can say without a doubt that I would never "go for something else". Maybe that comment would be true if you force the vaccine on addicts, but there are millions of addicts that fight this addiction every day an for us it would be a blessing to have our 'choices' to stay clean backed up with a vaccine.