Researchers reverse cocaine effects in mice

Cocaine abuse can lead to heart problems Keystone

Researchers in Geneva working with laboratory mice say they have found a way to reverse the effects of cocaine on the brain.

They claim the findings could lead to better treatments for drug addiction, which they say affects an estimated nine million people in Europe.

The team from the faculty of medicine at Geneva University focused on the part of the brain known to be involved with pleasure and addictive drugs, succeeding in repressing hyperactive cells charged up by cocaine.

Neuroscientist Christian Lüscher, who led the study, said it was the first time the mechanism needed to reverse the effects had been identified.

“This is the piece of the puzzle that was not known before – the mechanism a cell uses to get back to normal,” he said.

According to Lüscher, the research could one day make it easier to treat addicts because scientists now know what needs to be done in the brain to modify the effect of drug use.

He hopes the research will spur others to look at drug addiction as a brain disease and target treatment and studies accordingly.

“This sort of sets the framework for what is needed to reverse the cocaine,” he said. “We hope that in the future this could be beneficial for some aspects of addiction.”

Cocaine use

The study, published in the journal Science, builds on Lüscher’s earlier research that identified the part of the brain where cells become excited after cocaine use. The goal this time was to figure a way of reversing the impact of cocaine on receptors in the brain.

Lüscher and his team at the university’s department of basic neurosciences targeted the receptors that go into overdrive after cocaine use. They found that in order to correct the imbalance brought on by cocaine they needed to replace the affected receptors with new ones.

To do this, they administered a short burst of stimulation to another set of receptors to repress the hyper-charged cells.

“We have reversed the effect of cocaine and we show how the machinery in the cells has to be engaged in order to be reversed,” he said.

Mark Ungless, a neuroscientist at Imperial College, London, told Le Temps newspaper that Lüscher’s findings were significant because they opened up “very interesting” new paths for research.

swissinfo with agencies

Key facts

According to the Geneva team:
Drug addiction affects nine million people in Europe.
Addiction costs Europe, including Switzerland, €55 billion (SFr91 billion) a year.
Almost 3% of Swiss aged 15-39 say they have used cocaine, according to the latest figures.