Vaccine against smoking

• May 6, 2024

From now on, smokers will no longer have a pretext to leave this habit that affects the health of individuals, since American scientists they created a vaccine against smoking .

In information published in the BBC , researchers say the vaccine prevents nicotine from reaching the brain and produce pleasure in the smoker. This compound is one of the most addictive compounds known because it increases the levels of a brain chemical compound in the "reward circuits" of the brain. brain .

When a person eats a cigarette, he experiences feelings of euphoria, relaxation Y pleasure . Therefore, the vaccine against smoking has the objective of inhibiting the passage of tobacco smoke to the reward circuits.

But how is it achieved?

According to researchers from Weill Cornell Medical College , a single dose of vaccine He managed, in experiments with mice, to protect animals from nicotine addiction throughout their lives.

What they did was to use the liver of the animals as a "production factory" of antibodies capable of attacking the nicotine at the same time as the drug enters the bloodstream, preventing it from reaching the brain .

The researchers used the genetic sequence of an antinicotine antibody that had been previously created and placed it in a vector - a virus - that they injected into mice addicted to this compound.

When they received the injection the animals began to produce continuously the same antibody in the liver, and these subsequently began to float in the bloodstream to attack the nicotine .

Like the antibodies are always present in the blood, says the scientist, the effect against nicotine It works even when the individual stops smoking and relapses into addiction. However, the study is preliminary and further research should be carried out to test it in humans. And you, would you be willing to use this vaccine against smoking?

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Video Medicine: The Future of Quitting: A Nicotine Vaccine - ACS Headline Science (May 2024).