New Treatment to
Reduce Alcohol Consumption Targets Brain Receptor, Not Dopamine
By Dr.Fourkan Ali
Treatments
targeting brain receptors could be less expensive than current medications.
Researchers from the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee and
Johns Hopkins University are collaborating on a new treatment for alcoholism
that focuses on a receptor in the brain and not dopamine levels. Their efforts
have yielded positive results from both laboratory rats and primates, and
without the side effects that frequently accompany other alcohol treatments,
such as depression.
Traditional treatment for alcoholism targets the production of
dopamine, which is produced when alcohol is consumed. Such medications, like
Valium, are derived from opioid antagonists and can produce a range of side
effects, from depression to addiction to the treatment drugs themselves. “They
dampen out the dopamine system a little bit, so you don’t get happy when you
have an alcoholic beverage,” said James Cook, Ph.D, from the University of
Wisconsin, Milwaukee.
Cook and his fellow researchers focused their attention on
specific alcohol receptors; molecules in the brain that produced the same
results as the opioid antagonists, but without the side effects. They
discovered that a beta-carboline compound named 3-ISOPBC-HCI showed the greatest depress
of promise in regard to preventing binge drinking: tests using laboratory rats
bred with an addiction to alcohol showed a drastic drop in consumption after
administering the compound.
The compound also appeared to alleviate stress responses in the
test rats, leading the researchers to believe that the new compounds produce
not only a different response than the opioid antagonists, but also reduce an
addictive reaction to the compound.
Similar tests with the compound conducted on primates by
researchers at Johns Hopkins showed a decrease in alcohol consumption by more
than 90% in scenarios where alcohol was made available to the animals for a
two-hour period. The tests are part of a series of studies that may be
published in a year, though the results of the tests involving rats were presented at a meeting of the American Chemistry Society on August
19.
If the teams’ testing continues to yield positive results,
treatments could be made available within the next five to six years. V.V.N.
Phani Babu Tiruveedhula, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin,
Milwaukee, believes that the treatment would also be less expensive than
current medications because the manufacturing process has been reduced from
eight steps to two and has eliminated unwanted byproducts.
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