Brain Surgery For Drug Addicts

Chinese surgeons are performing the procedure at a rate critics call "alarming". [Image Source: Xinhua] 

Chinese Doctors Experiment With Controversial Brain Surgery for Drug Addicts -- Daily Tech 

Procedure involves drilling into patient's skull, destroying parts of their pleasure center

 The Chinese medical community is testing a bleeding edge brain surgery procedure that is equal parts controversial and intriguing. While the procedure -- designed to treat drug addiction -- draws some comparisons to archaic therapies, it leverages modern neuroscience to carefully target the neural circuits involved in addiction and destroy them.

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My Comment: You have to be desperate to agree to this.

Can A Vaccine Eliminate Nicotine's Addictive Traits?

Smoking Kills Challiyil Eswaramangalath Vipin via Wikimedia

With New Nicotine Vaccine, Cigarettes Give You No Pleasure -- Popular Science

By denaturing nicotine before it reaches the heart and brain, a new vaccine could mute the addictiveness of tobacco products

Nicotine addiction is a hard habit to break. But what if you could never get hooked in the first place? Researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York report in the journal Science Translational Medicine that they have developed a potential vaccine for nicotine addiction. In mice, the vaccine inhibits the effects of nicotine before they reach the heart or brain, making it seem as though the nicotine never entered the bloodstream.

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My Comment: I wonder if this science can also be used to eliminate the addictive properties of opiates like heroin?

Is Facebook And Twitter Addictive?

Facebook And Twitter Are More Addictive Than Cigarettes Or Alcohol, Study Finds -- FOX News

A new study suggests that social networking services such as Facebook and Twitter are more difficult to resist than cigarettes or alcohol.

A team from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business recently conducted an experiment involving 205 people in Wurtzburg, Germany to analyze the addictive properties of social media and other vices.

Participants in the week-long study were polled via BlackBerry smartphones seven times per day and asked to report when they experienced a desire within the past 30 minutes, and whether or not the succumbed to that desire. They were also asked to gauge each desire on a scale from mild to “irresistible.”

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My Comment: I could not care less about Twitter and Facebook, but the children of my friends are certainly attached to these websites.

Alcohol More Harmful Than Heroin, Cocaine

When the wider social effects were factored in, alcohol was deemed the most dangerous, followed by heroin and crack cocaine, according to a new study. Credit: iStockPhoto

From Cosmos/AFP:

LONDON: Alcohol is more harmful than illegal drugs like heroin and crack cocaine, a new study by British researchers said this week.

Scientists looked at the dangers to both the individual and to wider society and found that alcohol was the most dangerous substance, according to the study by the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs (ISCD).

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CrackBerries And Games Addicts: Beware An Internet Hit

Just 10 more minutes (Image: Bay Ismoyo/Getty)

From New Scientist:

WHEN does our predilection for internet technology cross over into harmful, addictive behaviour? It's a question that is taxing law-makers and health professionals.

For some, the idea that technology can be addictive is simply wrong-headed (see "User or abuser?"). That notion may soon be tested in the American courts. Last month, 51-year-old Craig Smallwood, an online gamer, was given leave by a court in Hawaii to proceed with a lawsuit against NC Interactive, complaining that he received insufficient warnings regarding the alleged "addictiveness" of its online game Lineage II, which he claims to have spent 20,000 hours playing since 2004.

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Valium 'Works Like Heroin'

From The Telegraph:

Valium, the tranquilliser once known as "mother's little helper", works by boosting the same brain chemical as heroin and cannabis, a study shows.

Diazepam, better known by the defunct brand name Valium, increases "feel good" dopamine levels which are typically targeted by other addictive drugs.

The finding, published in Nature, helps explain why people get hooked on the drug - nick-named "blues" or "vallies" - and may aid the design of safer alternatives.

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Research On Cocaine Reveals Gene-Altering Roots Of Addiction

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 Post

From 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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Bacteria 'Could Tackle Cocaine Addiction'

The discovery has been hailed as possible method of helping addicts get off Cocaine and could prevent deaths from overdose. Photo: PA

From The Telegraph:

A bacteria could be used to reduce the addictiveness of cocaine, scientists have found.

The naturally-occurring bacterial enzyme Cocaine esterase, CocE, breaks down cocaine which reduced its addictive properties.

The discovery has been hailed as possible method of helping addicts get off the drug and could prevent deaths from overdose.

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New Clues Emerge For Understanding Morphine Addiction

Scientists are reporting new clues to understanding morphine addiction.
(Credit: US Drug Enforcement Administration)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 27, 2009) — Scientists are adding additional brush strokes to the revolutionary new image now emerging for star-shaped cells called astrocytes in the brain and spinal cord. Their report, which suggests a key role for astrocytes in morphine's ability to relieve pain and cause addiction, appears online in ACS' Journal of Proteome Research, a monthly publication.

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Marijuana, Alcohol Addiction May Share Genes

From Yahoo News/Health Day:

FRIDAY, Dec. 18 (HealthDay News) -- The genes that make people susceptible to alcoholism also make them prone to becoming addicted to marijuana, a new study suggests.

Researchers interviewed almost 6,300 men and women aged 24 to 36, including almost 2,800 sets of twins who were part of the Australian Twin Registry, about their use of alcohol and marijuana over their lifetime.

Twins are valuable to researchers in determining the role of genetics in various diseases or conditions because identical twins share 100 percent of their genes, while fraternal twins share 50 percent of their genes, the same as other siblings.

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New Vaccine May Immunize Addicts from Cocaine's Pleasurable Effects

HIGH HOPES: Vaccines to decrease cocaine use have been in the works for years, but this new trial has had some encouraging results. ISTOCKPHOTO/MILOSJOKIC

From Scientific American:

Clinical trial data suggest that although pharmacotherapy for cocaine may be on the horizon, challenges remain.

Unlike opiates such as heroin or prescription painkillers, there is no medication specifically approved to help curb cocaine consumption. Now, an experimental vaccine offers hope for a new approach, researchers say, that spurs on antibodies, which bind with cocaine molecules and apparently helps some addicts stop feeling the pleasurable effects of the drug—thus deconditioning them out of their dependency.

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Flipping The Brain's Addiction Switch Without Drugs

Researchers have found a naturally occurring protein that gets rats addicted with no drugs at all. From left: BYU grad student David Allison, BYU psychology professor Scott Steffensen, and recent graduate Micah Hansen, who co-authored the research as an undergraduate. (Credit: Image courtesy of Brigham Young University)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (May 29, 2009) — When someone becomes dependent on drugs or alcohol, the brain's pleasure center gets hijacked, disrupting the normal functioning of its reward circuitry.

Researchers investigating this addiction "switch" have now implicated a naturally occurring protein, a dose of which allowed them to get rats hooked with no drugs at all.

The research will be published Friday in the journal Science.

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Nicotine May Have More Profound Impact Than Previously Thought

Researchers have found that the alpha-7 receptor, a site known to bind with nicotine, interacts with 55 different proteins. Nicotine may affect bodily processes -- and perhaps the actions of other commonly used drugs -- more broadly than was previously thought. (Credit: Hawrot Lab/Brown University)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 4, 2009) — Nicotine isn't just addictive. It may also interfere with dozens of cellular interactions in the body, new Brown University research suggests.

Conversely, the data could also help scientists develop better treatments for various diseases. Pharmaceutical companies rely on basic research to identify new cellular interactions that can, in turn, serve as targets for potential new drugs.

"It opens several new lines of investigation," said lead author Edward Hawrot, professor of molecular science, molecular pharmacology, physiology and biotechnology at Brown University.

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Sugar Can Be Addictive, Study Suggests

From Live Science:

A study of rats finds they show all the signs of addiction to sugar. The finding could help better understand eating disorders in humans.

Professor Bart Hoebel and his team in the Department of Psychology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute have been studying signs of sugar addiction in rats for years. They had previously demonstrated a behavioral pattern of increased intake and then showed signs of withdrawal.

New experiments captured craving and relapse to complete the picture.

"If bingeing on sugar is really a form of addiction, there should be long-lasting effects in the brains of sugar addicts," Hoebel said. "Craving and relapse are critical components of addiction, and we have been able to demonstrate these behaviors in sugar-bingeing rats in a number of ways."

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