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Vaccines that help fight drug addiction Understanding the painful mouth ulcers Health Notes
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Vaccines that help fight drug addiction Drug addiction is a fast-growing global public health problem. According to UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime), in 2009 between 149 and 272 million people, 3.3-6.1 per cent of the population between 15 and 64 years used illicit substances at least once in previous years. Addiction is considered a chronic relapsing disease with its onset in early age years and its course is often marked by remissions, relapses and chronicity. Relapses are common in spite of the best available treatments. Addiction is a multi-factorial disease. Genetics, hereditary factors, one’s environment, early development, psycho-social stresses, one’s personality traits, peer group pressures, socio-economic status and a host of other factors play an important role in drug addiction. Recent scientific evidence suggests that neurobiology plays a highly significant role in understanding and treatment of various addictions.
Current treatment approaches
Addicts are managed with medical and non-medical approaches like counselling, detoxification, drug substitution therapy and psycho-social rehabilitation. Most of the drug addicts live a life of penury and economic deprivation. Addiction further drives them to a much lower socio- economic status.
Vaccination against addiction
Vaccines have been conventionally used to treat infections but attempts have been made for more than 30 years to create vaccines against drug addiction. Dr. Kim.D.Janda, a Professor at the Scripps Research Institute, California, has completely dedicated his life to the development of such vaccines. These vaccines have been shown to be effective against animals in labs. Will the scientists succeed in duplicating the results of these vaccines in human beings also? This is a million dollar question? The clinical evidence strongly suggests that vaccines will be available for the patient population in five-six years only. In February, 12 Mexico scientists got the patent for a vaccine against heroin in the United States of America. Commented National Psychiatry Institute Director Maria Elena Medina, “It would be a vaccine for people who are serious heroin addicts and who have not received success with earlier treatments.” Goals of anti-addiction vaccines are to achieve initial abstinence, preventing a relapse, preventing addiction in high risk population and protection of the foetus during the pregnancy of a drug abuser.
Cocaine vaccines
They are currently at advance stage of development. It appears that the cocaine vaccine is going to be soon approved by the FDA for human use. Its results are quite promising. Studies have shown that the effect of cocaine vaccine appears to last two years. Cocaine vaccines have been developed by a team led by Ronald Crystal at Weill Cornell Medical College, New York. These vaccines have been under trial on human beings and their usefulness and side-effect profiles are being worked out.
Heroin vaccines
Methadone, buprenorphine and naltrexone maintenance are the present available treatments for opiates. Markets are flooded with all kinds of opioids, including morphine, heroin, and prescription pain-killers such as vicodin, oxycontin and tramadol. IV. Heroin intake is fast catching up among youth.
Nicotine vaccines
Clinical trials have shown that these vaccines are quite effective in reducing smoking among the smokers. Experiments have shown that a single dose of nicotine vaccine protected mice against nicotine addiction for the rest of their lives. Once vaccinated, the animal’s body continued providing antibodies throughout life and neutralised the nicotine present in the blood.
Methamphetamine vaccines
Methamphetamine is a highly toxic addictive substance. A high degree of relapses are very well known in methamphetamine addiction.
A combined anti-heroin and HIV vaccine
Intensive efforts are being made by Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) in Silver Spring, USA, to develop a combination of anti-heroin and HIV vaccine. Heroin abuse is strongly associated with a high risk of HIV infection and represents an important world health issue.
How do these vaccines work?
These vaccines employ antibodies —- proteins of the immune system —- which attach to potentially dangerous drug molecules in the body and help them to be cleared by human white blood cells and finally destroy them. So, once an addict or a normal person has been vaccinated, in case he consumes an addictive substance, it will soon be neutralised by the body and no longer any drug will be available to act on the human brain cells. The vaccine’s uses are like the Trojan horse instructions for making an antibody against nicotine. When cells are ‘infected’ by the vims, they get tricked into churning out a protein that blocks nicotine’s biological effects.
Ethical and social issues regarding vaccination
Many experts in the field of addiction feel that treating addiction with vaccines appear a too simplistic model. They feel that drug addicts will keep on trying new chemicals for addiction, and vaccines will fail to stop their craving. They also feel since brain cells stand blocked by vaccines, there is always a danger of an addict taking a very heavy and potentially dangerous quantity of the drug to bypass the action of the vaccines. The writer is a Ludhiana-based psychiatrist and d-addiction specialist. Email: rajeevgupta11@yahoo.co.in |
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Understanding the painful mouth ulcers Mouth ulcers are small, white to red patches inside the mouth where the top layer of the oral skin, mucosa, is damaged. Nearly everyone gets them at some time. But it becomes a cause for worry and a sign to launch a comprehensive investigative search if such ulcers tend to persist for more than three weeks or if one keeps getting bouts of mouth ulcers every few months, weeks or even every few days. Oral mouth ulcers may be a result of local skin or mucosal disease but in many cases it is a major sign of an internal systemic disease or even a malignancy. So these must never be ignored. Broadly, the recurrent mouth ulcers are of three main types, depending on how big they are and where exactly in the mouth one gets them.
Minor mouth ulcers
Most people get minor mouth ulcers. These are round or oval, and usually less than 5 millimetres (a little less than one-fifth of an inch) across. They tend to be greyish-white, with redness around them, and are usually on the inside of the lips or cheeks, or on the floor of the mouth. People usually get one to five such ulcers at a time.
Major mouth ulcers
Major mouth ulcers are less common than minor mouth ulcers, and they are oval and larger. They may be 1 to 3 centimetres (nearly one-half to one-and-a-quarter inches) across. They often happen on the lips or towards the back of the roof of the mouth (the soft palate). People usually get one to 10 such ulcers at a time.
Herpetiform ulcers
Some people get lots of small, painful ulcers called herpetiform ulcers. These ulcers can occur anywhere in the mouth. One may have as many as 100 at a time, each measuring 2 to 3 millimetres (about one-eighth of an inch) across. Some join together to form large, irregularly-shaped ulcers. The various causative factors include genetic predisposition, local trauma, hormonal changes, infective agents, gastrointestinal disorders, stress, immunological abnormalities and haematological deficiencies (vitamin B12, red cell folate, iron ), etc.
Conditions that affect the immune system
Several conditions make one more likely to get mouth ulcers because the immune system is not working properly. They all increase the amount of inflammation in the body and can cause ulcers.
HIV/AIDS
People infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS, often get problems with ulcers. That's because their immune system has trouble fighting off germs, so ulcers are more likely to get infected.
Skin cancer
If a mouth ulcer doesn't heal up, it may not be a mouth ulcer at all. It could be the start of a type of skin cancer called squamous cell carcinoma. The recurrent mouth ulcers affects between 15 and 25 per cent of the population. Males and females are equally affected, with a peak in early adult life. It is more common in professional and semi-professional people. About 20 per cent of patients may have vitamin B12, red cell folate or iron deficiency, and it is therefore best to exclude these potential causes. A positive family history is found with about one-third of patients. In 30 per cent cases there is a minor degree of immunological dysregulation underlying these oral ulcers. There is a high prevalence in higher socio-economic classes. To try to prevent the recurrence of common minor mouth ulcers, one should do the following:
The writer is Chief Consultant Dermatologist, National Skin Hospital, Mansa Devi Complex, Panchkula. E-mail : drvikas.nscindia@gmail.com |
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Too much 'sugary' food can weaken your bones
Washington: High-fat, high-sugar foods not only cause obesity and promote heart disease, but they can also contribute to conditions like osteoporosis by weakening bones, according to researchers. If this trend continues, this overlooked ‘silent robber’ will begin to cripple large numbers of at-risk baby boomers, said researchers at the University of Michigan and the Alberta Bone and Joint Health Institute. While this high-fat, high-sugar diet trend and the subsequent risk of osteoporosis are climbing frighteningly fast, there’s hope, said Ron Zernicke, dean of U-M’s School of Kinesiology and a professor of orthopedic surgery and biomedical engineering. — ANI Chicken soup can really
help fight cold
London: Researchers have found that a compound found in chicken soup – carnosine – helps the body’s immune system to fight the early stages of flu. But this benefit ended as soon as the soup was excreted from the body, they wrote in the American Journal of Therapeutics. Chicken soup’s benefits have been identified before. Over a decade ago, Dr Stephen Rennard, of the University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, wanted to find out why his wife’s recipe for chicken soup was so healing. Using blood samples from volunteers, he showed that the soup inhibited the movement of the most common type of white blood cell, neutrophils, which defend against infection.
— ANI
Its official! Music has
healing power
Washington: Though medical practitioners have been convinced of music’s health benefits for thousands of years, there had been little peer-reviewed research to back them up. But recent studies are providing an empirical backbone for the anecdotal evidence. A 2012 scientific review collects information from a number of studies to support music’s influence on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and the immune system. These results support the experiences of complementary practitioners, who have long used music to help heal. “As an integrative physician and traditional Chinese medicine practitioner, the healing power of music has always been an important part of my practice and family life,” said integrative medicine pioneer Isaac Eliaz.
— ANI
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Dr Rajeev Gupta
