A Potential Drug Against Alcohol Found
The first hint that the drug might be useful in cutting alcohol cravings surfaced when the investigators noticed that mice who didn’t have NK1R seemed
to have less desire to consume alcohol.
To test their qualms, the researchers gave the NK1R-blocking drug to 25 recovering alcoholics, while giving 25 others an ineffective placebo treatment.
The analysis revealed that those who received the drug reported about 50 percent fewer alcohol cravings.
In the study, the alcoholics who were given LY686017 reported fewer spontaneous cravings for alcohol than did those who received the placebo. But the patients were kept in a hospital, away from the behavioural triggers such as social stress that are present in the outside world.
?They may get into a fight with their spouse or at work, and after that they may abstain for some period of time, but then they go past the bar where they used to drink. We wanted to mimic that in the lab,? Nature quoted Heilig, as saying.
In order to create a stressful situation, the research team led the patients into a room and told them that they had to give a five-minute improvized talk to a committee of people in white coats, as if they were interviewing for their dream job.
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