FROM MONDAY'S MURKY MESS
Anti-smoking pill may help curb drinking By ANDREW
BRIDGES, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - A single pill appears to hold promise in
curbing the urges to both smoke and drink, according
to researchers trying to help people overcome
addiction by targeting a pleasure center in the brain.
The drug, called varenicline, already is sold to help
smokers kick the habit. New but preliminary research
suggests it could gain a second use in helping heavy
drinkers quit, too.
Much further down the line, the tablets might be
considered as a treatment for addictions to everything
from gambling to painkillers, researchers said.
Several experts not involved in the study cautioned
that there is no such thing as a magic cure-all for
addiction and that varenicline and similar drugs may
find more immediate use in treating diseases like
Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
Pfizer Inc. developed the drug specifically as a
stop-smoking aid and has sold it in the United States
since August under the brand name Chantix. Varenicline
works by latching onto the same receptors in the brain
that nicotine binds to when inhaled in cigarette
smoke, an action that leads to the release of dopamine
in the brain's pleasure centers. Taking the drug
blocks any inhaled nicotine from reinforcing that
effect.
A study published Monday suggests not just nicotine
but alcohol also acts on the same locations in the
brain. That means a drug like varenicline, which makes
smoking less rewarding, could do the same for
drinking. Preliminary work, done in rats, suggests
that is the case.
"The biggest thrill is that this drug, which has
already proved safe for people trying to stop smoking,
is now a potential drug to fight alcohol dependence,"
said Selena Bartlett, a neuroscientist with the Ernest
Gallo Clinic and Research Center at the University of
California, San Francisco who led the study. Details
appear this week in the journal Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences.
Pfizer provided the drug for the study, but was not
otherwise involved in the research.
More often than not, smoking and drinking go together
— an observation pub-goers have made for hundreds of
years. That a single drug could work to curb both
addictions isn't a given — nor is it surprising, said
Christopher de Fiebre, an associate professor of
pharmacology and neuroscience at the University of
North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth.
"This is an extremely important paper and hopefully it
will convince the major funding agencies that they
need to examine the interactions between nicotine and
alcohol to a greater extent than they have done to
date," said de Fiebre, who was not connected with the
study.
In fact, the California researchers, together with the
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism,
are now planning the first studies in humans of the
drug's effectiveness in curbing alcohol cravings and
dependence, Bartlett said. That the drug is already
Food and Drug Administration-approved should speed
things along.
"This is a drug that people are actually using. That's
not trivial — not at all," said Mark Egli, co-leader
of the medications development program at the NIAAA,
part of the National Institutes of Health. "There is
plenty of animal research that looks pretty cool but
there is no way those drugs are ever going to be used
by human beings."
In the new study, researchers trained rats to drink
alcohol and measured the effect of varenicline once
the animals became the laboratory equivalent of heavy
drinkers. They found the drug curbed their drinking.
Even when stopped, the animals resumed drinking but
didn't binge.
Just as varenicline doesn't work for all smokers, it's
highly unlikely it would for all drinkers.
"Is this going to be a cure-all? No, not for smoking
or alcoholism because both diseases are more
complicated than a single target or single genetic
issue," said Allan Collins, a professor of
pharmacology at the University of Colorado who was not
connected to the study.
Still, Collins, who's worked on the topic for decades,
called the drug's potential use in treating alcoholism
a "no-brainer." And Egli said it supports the emerging
view that there is a common biological basis for
addictions to both alcohol and tobacco.
As for Pfizer, the New York company has yet to decide
whether to seek broader FDA approval for the drug, a
spokesman said.
"Without having considerable more data on this it
would be very difficult for us to say we might pursue
it or not. It's almost a wait-and-see," said Pfizer's
Stephen Lederer.
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