WORLD / America
Anti-smoking pill may help curb drinking
(AP)
Updated: 2007-07-10 20:18
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.
A man puts out his cigarette in Strasbourg, eastern France. Health
advocates have called for tougher regulations on tobacco, as officials
from 145 countries met in Bangkok to discuss ways of boosting global
efforts to stop smoking.[File]
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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