UC Irvine pharmacological researchers may have hit on a new way to battle cocaine addiction. Material they shared with Science Daily suggests that blocking a hormone related to hunger regulation can limit coke cravings.
A study led by Shinjae Chung and Olivier Civelli zeroed in on how
the melanin-concentrating hormone works with dopamine in the brain's
“pleasure center” to create an addictive response to cocaine use. The
researchers further found that blocking MCH in these brain cells
limited cocaine cravings.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter essential to the normal functioning
of the central nervous system. It also is associated with feelings of
pleasure and is released in the brain during eating, sex and drug use.
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“This discovery indicates that MCH is a key regulator of dopamine in
a brain area associated with both pleasure and addiction,” Civelli, the
Eric L. and Lila D. Nelson Professor of Neuropharmacology, tells
Science Daily.
“We believe that efforts to target MCH may lead to new treatments to
break addiction to cocaine and, possibly, other drugs, like
amphetamines and nicotine.”
The findings appear in this week's early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.