A man prepares bundles of cocaine in his house to be sold in a neighborhood in Venezuela. Researchers are getting closer to understanding how the drug changes genes in the brain to cause addiction. Photograph by: Edwin Montilva / Reuters, National PostFrom The Montreal Gazette/Reuters:
Prolonged exposure to cocaine can cause permanent changes in the way genes are switched on and off in the brain, a finding that may lead to more effective treatments for many kinds of addiction, U.S. researchers said.
A study in mice by Ian Maze of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and colleagues found that chronic cocaine addiction kept a specific enzyme from doing its job of shutting off other genes in the pleasure circuits of the brain, making the mice crave the drug even more.
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