Gene therapy to deliver extra copies of a dopamine receptor may someday help alcoholics and drug addicts recover, report scientists from the Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Previous Brookhaven research suggested that over time, alcohol and drug abuse destroy D2 dopamine receptors in the brain, essential for a normal pleasure response. To override this blunted response, addicts increase their drinking and drug using. The Brookhaven team hypothesized that adding D2 receptors might therefore decrease alcohol intake.
In the experiments, rats trained to drink large amounts of alcohol received injections into the brain of a deactivated virus that ferried copies of the gene for D2 to the nucleus accumbens, known as the brain's pleasure center and an area associated with the reinforcing effects of alcohol.
Among the rats that initially preferred alcohol, those that received the D2 gene drank 64% less alcohol than rats that received only a . . . [Full Text of this Article]
