A shot that can get rid of alcoholism
American scientists have announced the creation of a vaccine against alcoholism. In experiments on monkeys, they showed that a single injection of a gene preparation is sufficient for this purpose.How does this deliverer from harmful addiction work? Recall how it arises. Alcohol, like other narcotic substances, is used to get pleasure. The hormone dopamine, which is called the hormone of joy, is responsible for it. Every living creature strives to get it. For example, there are known experiments with a rat, in whose brain electrodes were implanted, and it was able to stimulate the pleasure center by pressing the pedal, causing an electrical discharge. So, it pressed the pedal for hours, could not stop and died refusing to eat because it directly accessed pleasure. Dopamine levels rise with alcohol, a drug or some other substance. And the body gets into the pleasure zone.
But all good things have a way of ending at some point. In this case, the abundance and frequent use of hot drinks makes the brain adapt, the dopamine surge becomes less and less, and therefore the pleasure goes away. To get it back, it is necessary to increase doses, preferably more often. This is how alcohol dependence is formed. Like any other addiction.
Scientists decided to return dopamine "holiday", but without alcohol. They worked with the GDNF gene. It encodes a protein that is associated with dopamine neurons. If the body is normal, it is quite sufficient, but in a state of addiction, when the brain begins to "cut back" on dopamine, it begins to be lacking. In experiments with monkeys, an extra copy of the GDNF gene was injected directly into their brains. To deliver it, scientists used an adenovirus. This is quite popular in biotechnology method of introducing DNA into the right cells. In a paper in Nature Medicine, the authors write that a month after the operation, the macaques' interest in drinking dropped dramatically, with alcohol consumption decreasing by 90%.
To what extent this method of treating alcoholism will be effective in humans, will become clear in the near future. The researchers believe that, to begin with, it can be used only for the most severe cases of addiction.