Cigarette smoking is recognised to be a major risk factor for disease, but once started, the habit is hard to quit. Nicotine is mainly responsible for dependence on tobacco and, historically, nicotine addiction has been one of the hardest to break. Now scientists at Scripps Florida have found that blocking the orexin A receptor in animal models abolishes the stimulatory effects of nicotine on brain reward circuitries and significantly reduces the desire for nicotine. In the study, the selective orexin A receptor antagonist, SB-334867, was found to decrease nicotine self-administration in rats and also reduced motivation to seek and obtain the drug.
If Orexin A is also involved in sustaining nicotine addiction in human smokers, blocking the orexin A receptor could be a potential target for developing new smoking cessation treatments. The Scripps group are hoping to discover new orexin A antagonists that would help smokers quit the habit. The study was published in the Nov 24 online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The orexin A receptor appears to be widely involved in regulating motivated behaviour and other studies have shown that SB-334867 also reduces alcohol-seeking behaviour in rats.
Related posts:
- Why Some Smokers Find it Harder to Quit At this time of year many smokers will be trying to quit, and a recent study suggests that some will...
- Structure of “Caffeine Receptor” Solved Collaborating scientists at the Scripps Research Institute and The Amsterdam Center for Drug Research have determined the crystal structure of...
- PF-3845 – A Potent and Selective FAAH Inhibitor The discovery of the cannabis receptors CB1 and CB2 and the subsequent discovery of anandamide (N-arachidonoylethanolamine), the first endogenous agonist...
- New Indications for AMD-3100 AMD-3100 A drug which failed to reach the market as a treatment for HIV/AIDS has recently been shown to improve...
- Dial M3 for Memory The cognitive improvement in Alzheimer’s disease patients brought about by treatment with acetyl cholinesterase inhibitors has been largely attributed to...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
This entry was posted on Friday, December 5th, 2008 at 9:53 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Entries (RSS)