14 DAY TRIAL // Experts report important progress in their work to synthesize a vaccine that would help people using drugs put their addiction to methamphetamine behind them. Such a wonder drug has been sought for for years, but thus far experts only had limited success, on only a few promising leads.
At this point, the work is confined to scientific laboratories, but experts are convinced they could have such a chemical brought to the clinic within a few years. However, they admit they have to conduct at least a round of human testing beforehand.
Many people don't know very much about the scale of meth addiction in the United States alone. Official statistics show that this type of addiction is costing the economy around $23 billion yearly.
These sums are lost on law enforcement to patrol the streets for meth dealers, in medical and law expenditures, as well as in productivity lost at the workplace. But all of these could become things of the past soon, investigators say.
Crystal meth is one of the most addictive substances in the world, and therefore rehabilitation is often useless. Former users have a very high percentage of relapse, even after following conventional behavioral treatment programs.
According to study researcher Kim Janda, PhD, and her team, existing vaccine options are either ineffective or too expensive for wide-scale use. This is the main reason why her group decided to investigate new forms of vaccine on its own.
Of the new formulations the experts produced, three proved to be very promising, and warrant further attention, Janda explains. All of these chemicals elicited a very strong, positive response in the immune system of mouse models.
The way in which mice respond to meth addiction is very similar to our own, and this is why experts are using them in the lab as substitutes. On numerous occasions, drugs developed on mice proved effective in humans as well.
“These findings represent a unique approach to the design of new vaccines against methamphetamine abuse,” the research team writes in a scientific paper accompanying the findings.
Details of the new work were published in the latest issue of the esteemed Journal of the American Chemical Society, PsychCentral reports.