Vitals Spotlight - We Give the Doctor an Exam

Dr. Thomas Kosten

What happens when a cocaine addict takes a snort of cocaine and doesn’t get high? A new experimental vaccine accomplishes just that, creating antibodies that deactivate the drug before it enters the brain and preventing users from feeling anything. The hope is that if addicts don’t get high they will stop taking the drug. Or will it cause them to increase their intake to try to overcome the effects? Time will tell.

Dr. Thomas Kosten, professor at Baylor College who worked on this research at Yale, found that the vaccine created enough of a response in some subjects allowing them to cut their drug use by half.

“This is the first study that has ever been done with an illicit drug to show that a vaccine can be effective in humans,” said Kosten.

According to Vitals.com, Kosten received his medical degree at Cornell University and completed his residency in psychiatry at Yale.

(psychcentral.com)

The New York Times reports that the clinical trial consisted of 115 addicts who attended a methadone clinic but also used cocaine and other drugs. 58 participants were given the vaccine, while 57 were given dummy injections. Although 55 of the participants received all the shots, only 21 or 38 percent developed enough antibodies to block the effect of cocaine on their brains.

Those who reached the threshold had significantly more cocaine free urine samples than the others, with 53 percent reducing their cocaine use by half, compared with the 23 percent that were vaccinated but did not make sufficient antibodies. Although the effect wore off after only two months.

“That was pretty impressive because they were daily users of cocaine and in effect they mostly stopped using cocaine, though they tested it every couple of weeks to see ‘Gee, can I get high now.’ ” Kosten asserts.

He feels that though the drug doesn’t prevent the craving, with the help of antibodies it can prevent relapses for those who want to quit.

“Antibodies are very large proteins and when the cocaine attaches to those antibodies it can’t get into the brain or heart so drug users feel nothing,” said Kosten.

Dr. Kosten feels that such vaccines would be suitable for all kinds of addictive substances except alcohol.

“This raises the chances of tackling addictions to smoking, heroin and methamphetamines.”

READ MORE ABOUT DR. THOMAS KOSTEN

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Tags: cocaine addiction, cocaine vaccine, Dr. Thomas Kosten, New York Times

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 13th, 2009 at 10:41 am and is filed under Doctors In The Media, Front Page News, Healing Power, Medical Research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.