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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
A new therapeutic may help reverse chemical imbalances made to the brain by habitual drug use and could one day help recovering drug addicts avoid future drug use.
Researchers from The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston developed and tested a treatment on rats and found it effective in reducing the animals' cravings. Their findings are in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.
When someone habitually misuses drugs, their brain chemistry is changed in ways that make it harder for them to quit taking drugs despite negative consequences. Once someone has developed this brain disorder, their mind pays sharper attention to cues that encourage drug use, making it harder for them to abstain.
Serotonin, a brain chemical that transmits information between neural regions, is a key player in these changes. There are currently no medications available to correct this chemical imbalance.
UTMB pharmacology and toxicology professors Jia Zhou, Kathryn Cunningham and their colleagues found that the serotonin 2C receptors in drug addicts do not work as well as they should. They designed, synthesized and pharmacologically evaluated a series of small molecule therapeutics designed to restore the weakened signaling.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by leftover on Tuesday July 03 2018, @06:30PM (1 child)
Logged in to say this. Drug addiction is a symptom of pain and hopelessness. Perhaps we should seriously consider approaches for "curing" the causes rather than the symptom, for a change. So much effort is expended on finding a pill to cure drug addiction simply because there is a historical pattern of high monetary returns, at least for a while, in the big pharma business complex. Never mind the suffering, there is potential for gigabucks!
Granted, the causes and workings of pain/hopelessness are poorly understood. That in itself is shameful. It isn't as though there has ever been a shortage of samples. Judging from the astonishing irrelevance of much funded research, there doesn't even seem to be a shortage of funding. We need to find the blockage and shine a big light on it.
Bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mhajicek on Tuesday July 03 2018, @07:07PM
Economic inequality is a big factor. Those in power only want to increase it though. "It is not enough that I succeed, others must fail."
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek