Cocaine Addiction May Be Treated with Common Drug

According to the conclusions of a new study, it would appear that a common form of medication can be used to successfully help patients who want to quit cocaine. The investigation was only carried out on lab animals, but scientists believe they could devise a way of applying it to humans as well.

The work was carried out by scientists at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, who used a common beta blocker to study cocaine addiction. The chemical, called propranolol, is generally used to treat those suffering from hypertension and anxiety.

This substance works – as far as cocaine addiction goes – by blocking the human brain from retrieving memories related to former drug use. In other words, it prevents animal models from remembering tha they used the potent drug.

While the finding may seem minor at first, experts say that this is a tremendous breakthrough. The vast majority of people who relapse into cocaine use do so on account of the memories they have of the times when they were high.

According to study researchers and UWM psychologist Dr. Devin Mueller, depriving the addicts of these memories may do them a world of good when it comes to their personal rehabilitation.

Details of the study appear in the August issue of the esteemed medical journal Neuropsychopharmacology, PsychCentral reports. As much as 80 percent of all cocaine users tend to relapse after less than six months of being clean.

“Right now, there are no FDA-approved medications that are known to successfully treat cocaine abuse, only those that are used to treat the symptoms of cocaine withdrawal, which are largely ineffective at preventing relapse,” Mueller explains.

The research team believe that the long-lasting effect of propranolol may in fact be permanent. The protective effect was found to last even in the presence of stimuli that researchers knew could induce relapse in many patients.

What researchers need to focus on right in is determine the ares of the brain where the chemical acts in order to mediate the retrieval of cocaine-associated memories. This is not yet known, and is an important part of converting the substance into an useful drug.

If this study is successful, then investigators could provide doctors with a new way of reducing the number of cocaine addicts on the streets. Conceivably, similar approaches could be used to treat addition to other drugs as well.