Word: volkow
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Vaccines are one of our top priorities," says Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), which helped fund the study and will finance a larger study of the cocaine vaccine next year. In September, NIDA also granted $10 million for a clinical trial to the makers of NicVAX, a nicotine vaccine that works similarly to the cocaine vaccine - by stimulating the immune system to create antibodies that bind to drug molecules and prevent them from entering the brain. (Because people don't generally make natural antibodies to cocaine, the cocaine vaccine combines a cocaine molecule...
...produce sufficient antibodies. Overall, cocaine use was reduced by at least half in 53% of the people who produced a strong antibody response, compared with 23% of those who had a weaker antibody response. That's far from abstinence, although reduction in drug use still has benefits, Volkow notes - like reducing people's risk of overdose and heart attack, for example...
Another issue is that the vaccine would require booster shots to maintain a consistent level of antibodies, so Volkow suggests that a successful vaccine would in theory be most useful for relapse prevention, rather than to initiate abstinence. "If you give it to someone who has gone through rehab and is trying to stay clean and relapses, the vaccine will be able to interfere with that relapse and that will be incredibly important," she says. When former drug abusers attempt to use "just once," it often leads rapidly back to full addiction, a cycle that could perhaps be curbed...
...help people stop smoking or drinking, including naltrexone, buproprion, acomprosate and Chantix, which have shown varying degrees of benefit - most addiction researchers would continue to encourage abstinence. "There are always some patients who can [cut down] to drink small amounts, but they are the exception," says Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which is funding several ongoing trials of baclofen. Although Volkow thinks baclofen shows promise in helping patients quit drinking altogether, she says the idea of controlled drinking is unwise: "My advice to patients is, Don't risk...
...Either way, you're going to make a mess, and surprisingly fast. Volkow points out that even without increasing dopamine output, modafinil blocks the re-uptake of more than half the amount the brain naturally releases. "This completely negates the argument that modafinil has no dopaminergenic effect," she says. "It does have the drug signature required to produce addiction." The safe party drug, once again, is not nearly as safe as it seems...