Researchers target GABA, noradrenaline.
According to Catalyst Pharmaceutical Partners, a company conducting research on drugs for the treatment of addiction, "The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has recognized that cocaine addiction is a 'serious, life-threatening condition for which there is no current drug treatment,' and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) has stated that finding a pharmacological treatment for cocaine addiction is their number one research priority."
Other researchers view it differently, however. Allan Parry, a drug counsellor in Liverpool, U.K., told New Scientist that such work was "only likely to be relevant to a tiny minority of people. People often give up cocaine because their lifestyle changes or they just grow up."
Fighting fire with fire--using drugs to treat drug addiction--will likely remain a controversial approach for years to come.
What is the rationale for the use of drugs in the treatment of drug addiction? There are two basic approaches. Scientists look for medications that help patients initiate abstinence, and they look for drugs that help prevent relapse once the patient has achieved abstinence. The categories are not hard and fast. For example, a drug that effective reduces the reinforcing effects of cocaine by reducing the intensity of withdrawal can theoretically perform both functions at once. On the other hand, a drug that blunts the euphoric effects of cocaine--a drug that takes away the best of the buzz, no matter how much cocaine is ingested--can also succeed at the twin tasks of abstinence initiation and relapse prevention.
The search for medications with which to treat cocaine addiction has been in progress much longer than equivalent efforts aimed at methamphetamine addiction. One research target of long standing is modafinil, an odd-duck drug sold as Provigil for the treatment of narcolepsy. A mild stimulant, modafinil does a little bit of everything, pharmacologically tweaking dopamine, noradrenaline, anandamide and GABA receptor systems. Perhaps for this reason, the drug seemingly has been tried for almost everything, from Alzheimer's to atypical depression to jet lag. The U.S. military has reportedly shown some interest in it.
According to published research by Kyle M. Kampman in the June 2008 Addiction Science and Clinical Practice (PDF), modafinil-treated human subjects used less cocaine than placebo-using counterparts did in several recent small-scale studies. "In a double blind pilot trial with 62 cocaine-dependent patients, those who received modafinil submitted more cocaine-metabolite-free urine samples than placebo-treated patients (42 vs. 22 percent; Dackis et al., 2005)."
Propranolol, better known as the beta-blocker Inderal, works primarily by suppressing adrenaline and noradrenaline levels. In human studies to date, propranolol has shown itself most effective with the most severely cocaine-addicted patients. Studies by Kampman have shown that propanolol-treated patients stay in treatment longer than patients in control groups do.
Specific research on relapse prevention strategies has focused on GABA-enhancing drugs that inhibit cocaine reinforcement by secondarily blocking the dopamine surge characteristic of cocaine intoxication. In addition to vigabatrin, discussed in the previous post, topiramate is another particularly well-suited candidate for relapse prevention. Known as Topamax, and prescribed for seizures and migraines, the drug has shown early promise: "In a 13-week, double-blind, placebo-controlled pilot trial of topiramate involving 40 cocaine-dependent patients.... more of those on topiramate achieved at least 3 weeks of continuous abstinence (59 vs. 26 percent)."
Surprisingly, the granddaddy of all anti-addiction drugs--Antabuse--has made a comeback as a subject of study for cocaine addiction, even though it has never been spectacularly effective in its original application as a relapse prevention drug for alcoholics. Disulfiram, as it is known chemically, causes unpleasant physical sensations, including vomiting, when combined with even small amounts of alcohol. It does so by inhibiting the enzymes responsible for degrading alcohol. Even a little becomes too much. In similar fashion, disulfiram retards the breakdown of cocaine, leading to extremely high levels that induce paranoia and anxiety rather than a pleasurable, if extreme, high. At least four published trials have demonstrated reduced cocaine use in disulfiram-treated patients, according to Kampman's paper . One important downside to using Antabuse for cocaine addiction is that serious complications might occur if alcohol is added to the mix.
Finally, and still well into the future, is the prospect of relapse prevention therapy by means of a vaccine--an entirely different mechanism of approach. Research has shown that it is possible to produce "cocaine-specific antibodies that bind to cocaine molecules and prevent them from crossing the blood-brain barrier, thereby blunting the drug's euphoric and reinforcing effects," Kampman's paper asserts. A vaccine called TA-CD has tested well in preliminary studies.
