So in this post I asked whether there is a pill that will destroy addiction, and a few pages later in the same magazine, I see scientists have an injection that seems to do just that – in rats. In NewScientist (3 February 2018, paywall), Alice Klein reports:
This story sounds familiar to Iain McGregor at the University of Sydney, who has been studying substance abuse for over 25 years. One of the hallmarks of addiction is a waning interest in human contact and a growing fixation on seeking out the vice – be it alcohol, amphetamines, cocaine, heroin, prescription opioids, nicotine or any other addictive substance. …
To try to restore the social behaviour of drug users, McGregor set his sights on oxytocin, known as the love hormone or cuddle chemical. Naturally released during social interactions, sex and when women give birth, it helps to strengthen human bonds.
As a starting point, McGregor tried injecting oxytocin into rats that were so heavily addicted to methamphetamine that they would push a lever hundreds of times just to get one hit. “We actually had to limit their intake or they’d overdose and die,” he says. The results were astounding: the oxytocin-treated rats almost completely stopped pressing the lever, a sign they had lost interest in the drug.
However, people are not rats:
Following these promising findings, several small clinical trials were set up in the US to test the potential of oxytocin for treating dependency on alcohol, cocaine, heroin, prescription opioids, marijuana and nicotine. Unlike in rat studies, the hormone couldn’t be injected in large doses into peoples’ bloodstreams or directly into their brains due to safety issues. So to get the oxytocin into the brain, they sprayed it up the nose.
However, the results from these trials so far have been disappointing: intranasal oxytocin relieves drug cravings only slightly, if at all. This is probably because only a small amount of intranasal oxytocin actually makes it into the brain. The large molecule has trouble crossing the blood-brain barrier and is known to break down easily in the circulation.
But progress continues, resulting in the creation of something called SOC-1. In the animal models, SOC-1 also seems to prevent relapse.
Hope on the horizon? Maybe.
