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Cocaine addiction vaccine
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The first working vaccine for cocaine addiction is now being tested.
The vaccine uses the immune system to block cocaine's euphoric effect. Antibodies are created that bind to the cocaine and prevent it from entering the blood stream. A blood enzyme, cholinesterase, breaks down the cocaine continuously. The breakdown products are eliminated through the kidneys and liver.
The first trial involved 94 subjects. The majority of the subjects used crack cocaine. Randomized subjects received the vaccine five times over a twelve week period. The vaccine worked for 38 percent of the subjects that received it.
The vaccine's effect depended on the level of antibody achieved. Those who reach high levels of
antibodies are more likely to be able to stay cocaine-free. The problem to be overcome is the lack of antibody response. Twenty-five percent of those treated did not have an antibody reaction. The group is pursing several alternatives to improve the results.
This is a relapse prevention medication.
Dr. Thomas R. Kosten, a professor at Baylor College of Medicine is evaluating the vaccine that took a veritable host of researchers fifteen years to develop.
Kosten holds the Jay H. Waggoner Endowed Chair in the Menninger Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at BCM. He is also the research director of the Veterans Affairs National Substance Use Disorders Quality Enhancement Research Initiative based at the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Houston.
Others who took part in this research include Drs. Bridget A. Martell and James Poling and registered nurse Ellen Mitchell of Yale University School of Medicine and the Veterans Affairs Connecticut Hospital; and Drs. Frank M. Orson, Roger D. Rossen and Tracie Gardner of Baylor College of Medicine and the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Houston.
The report appears in the Archives of General Psychiatry
If everyone who is arrested in possession of cocaine is forced to take the vaccine as it now stands that will cut demand. Reducing demand is a cost effective alternative to the "holy war on drugs" that has always been an abysmal failure and waste of money. The resultant lowered cost to the court system will create smaller government tax hand in your pocket.
We can also eliminate the "spiritual" hocus-pocus of groups like NA that has a success rate of seven tenths of one percent (0.007 percent). Europe has enjoyed decades of better success with addiction without using a "spiritual" approach to a chemical problem. The utter failure of the "spiritual" approach to the drug problem must be the reason there is a federal mandate that forces states to send addicts to a treatment that does not work.
Dr. Kosten and colleagues, have outwitted both the pusher and the government and gave every tax payer a real tax break. Now that is some good government.
http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/
http://www.med.yale.edu/psych/faculty/kosten_thomas.html
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