The topic on opioid-induced hyperalgesia made me interested in looking into the opioid epidemic we currently have in the United States.
Currently, heroin is one of the most preferred illicit drugs of choice, and like mentioned in the article, is taken by a variety of people. With heroin being Rich and poor, the psychologically distressed because of abuse or because they are looking for the high. Heroin is processed from morphine, which comes from the opium poppy plant, giving the family of drugs the appropriate name of “opioids”. Drugs like Vicodin, Percocet, and OxyCotin are all made from synthetic morphine and are given with the intention to relieve pain but are illicitly used to induce a high. In recent years, heroin has been laced with fentanyl and the number of heroin users alone has tripled in the United States between the years of 2003 and 2014.
While the Chicago area is ranked number one nationally for emergency room visits related to heroin use, the issue is a global one. All over the United States the deaths from heroin overdoses have also tripled in the past 15 years, and even the current President of the United States has declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency. Programs exist, but getting people to commit to the program is hard, and not to relapse shortly after is even harder. There are medications as well, like methadone, buprenorphine, and naltrexone. Each of these treatments do work in their own way, but patients experience undesirable side effects and also might be able to take enough heroin to get over the unpleasant effects or not follow through with their plan. Addiction is an ongoing struggle, because addictive substances transform the brain’s pleasure circuits, causing changes that linger long after users stop taking the drug.
The idea behind the vaccine is simple, what if someone were to take heroin and instead of feeling the pleasurable effects they normally would, they just would not feel anything at all? Heroin is preferred over morphine because heroin has an easier time slipping through the blood-brain barrier. While giving a vaccine might sound a little strange, if we talked about addiction as an illness or disease, then it does not seem as strange. The pleasure is all processed in the brain, so Dr. Kim Janda’s lab at the University of Washington in collaboration with the Scripps Research Institute looked into how a vaccine could be a viable option for battling addiction. It is not like a typical vaccine in the nature of what it would do, like help the immune system generate antibodies to train the body in preparation for the real thing. The vaccine instead would inhibit the effects of heroin. Janda says the difference, however, with this vaccine, is it’s focus on targeting heroin, morphine (since the body degrades heroin into morphine), and an opioid called 6-acetyl morphine, an intermediate between heroin and morphine.
The idea to use a vaccine to battle addiction has been around for a (surprisingly) long time. The efforts to create a vaccine, however, were not as favorable as first trying out different methods like using less potent drugs so that patients can better deal with the terrible withdrawal symptoms. With an increasing number of users, other methods were put to the test. Vaccines for addiction still face criticism today, even in the face of overwhelming positivity towards the advancement of the vaccine. While it’s only been tested on rhesus monkeys and mice, most people seem to think it’s a step in the right direction while critics see it as not helping, since the person does not tackle it on their own or get to the underlying cause of substance abuse.
The vaccine, if passes human trials and was made available, would be another weapon in the battle against addiction. Coupled with psychotherapy, heroin dependencies could become an easier habit to beat. But like stated in the article, if the person does not want the help, they will not change.
News Article: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/aug/26/will-heroin-vaccine-cure-west-drug-epidemic-chemical-answer-to-social-problem
Academic Paper: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jacs.7b03334
No comments:
Post a Comment