101632: Cocaine Research Update: Collection X (NIDA Notes)

About the Course:

This course is based on three NIDA Notes articles. NIDA Notes is a large collection of brief relevant articles focusing on current drug abuse treatment evidence.

Genetic Engineering Reveals Proteins’ Key Role in Sensitivity to Cocaine describes how genetic engineering strategies like those used at the California Institute of Technology to study nicotine addiction have helped other investigators identify a pair of proteins that seem to influence cocaine addiction.

Researchers Investigate Cocaine “Abstinence Syndrome” explains how researchers have focused on motivation as the centerpiece of the addiction puzzle based on the observation that in many addicted individuals, compulsive drug-seeking behavior overtakes the most fundamental motivators, including food and sex.

Sigma Antagonists: Potential Cocaine Medications With Novel Activity details how finds from a study strengthen speculation that drugs like rimcazole might help recovering individuals avoid temptations to relapse to cocaine.

All three articles are contained in one PDF.

Journal/Publisher:

NIDA

Publication Date:

August 2005 and December 2004

Author

Lori Whitten and Patrick Zickler

About the Author:

Lori Whitten and Patrick Zickler are NIDA Notes staff writers.

Recommended For:

This course is recommended for health care professionals, especially addiction counselors, psychologists, mental health counselors, social workers, and nurses who seek knowledge about how genetic engineering reveals proteins’ key role in sensitivity to cocaine; how researchers investigate the cocaine “abstinence syndrome;” and how sigma antagonists are potential cocaine medications with novel activity.

Course Objectives:

1. Explain how genetic engineering reveals proteins’ key role in sensitivity to cocaine.

2. Describe the “abstinence syndrome” as it relates to cocaine.

3. Identify how coadministration of rimcazole with cocaine blocks locomotor stimulation in mice and how pretreatment with rimcazole analog SH3-28 decreases subjective effects of cocaine in rats.