An anti-smoking vaccine?
Lots of anti-smoking developments in the last 2-3 months. The approval of Chantix was pretty significant (still waiting to see how it works on in the real world in terms of insurers covering it, popularity, and anecdotal success rates), Sanofi-Aventis got Acomplia approved in Europe as a weight-loss drug, and now we've got tests of a vaccine that blocks the nicotine rush. It's called Nabi by NicVax.
Now the Madison man is among 300 people around the country who are testing an experimental vaccine that makes the immune system attack nicotine in much the same way it would fight a life-threatening germ.
The treatment keeps nicotine from reaching the brain, making smoking less pleasurable and theoretically, easier to give up. The small amount that still manages to get in helps to ease withdrawal, the main reason most quitters relapse.
Not being a smoker, I don't know what the nicotine rush feels like. It's important to note that addiction to smoking is more than simple chemical dependence. There're many behaviors that have been ingrained into a smoker's habits that need to be supplemented and/or changed. The psychological dependence on smoking it just as significant as the chemical dependence.
Things like taking a smoke break to de-stress for 5 minutes. Waking up in the morning and reaching for that first cigarette. The after-dinner smoke; the weight gained when smoking stops. All of these "simple" things are some of the biggest contributers to smoker relapse. Quitting smoking will never be easy, but it's nice to see improvements in the chemical dependence arena. I'd like to see some more emphasis placed on the psychological aspects of quitting — though these aren't so easily monetized, so I don't see that ever happening in a meaningful way outside of government and/or non-profit initiatives.
Most significantly, this vaccine could prevent relapse by blocking the rush that one has become accustomed to when smoking that first cigarette. Nabi has been fast-tracked by the FDA, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse gave NicVax a second $4 million grant to finance R&D.
He and other participants will get four or five shots, either four or six weeks apart, and will be studied for a year. Two-thirds will get the vaccine; the others, dummy shots. Neither they nor the doctors will know who got what until the study ends.
They also will get counseling and must set a quit date, usually around the second shot, because the first shot is just meant to "prime" the immune system. Subsequent doses make it produce antibodies, which latch onto nicotine in the bloodstream and keep it from crossing the blood-brain barrier and getting into the brain where it maintains the addiction.
Interesting. I'd love to see how well the participants fare, and what the relapse rate is. Most importantly, how low does the relapse rate have to be for the vaccine to be declared a success, and what are the consequences of a bad reaction to the vaccine?
[tags]Medicine, smoking, vaccine, addiction, dependence, NicVax, Nabi[/tags]
No Comments »
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post.
| TrackBack URI
You can also bookmark
this on del.icio.us or check the cosmos