21.11.08 - 13:01 -
Clinical trials for the development of a "vaccine" against cocaine addiction will begin in Spain in the first quarter of 2009, the Health Ministry said on Thursday.
The tests, in which about 170 volunteers will participate, will be carried out in 10 hospitals that have not yet been selected.
The first trials of the vaccine were conducted in 2007 in the Hospital Sant Pau in Barcelona.
The vaccine will be used exclusively for therapeutic purposes and will be used "in people already addicted to the substance," said Dr. Carlos Álvarez Vara on Thursday at the presentation of a report from Spain's national drug plan.
The vaccine is designed to create antibodies that combat the effects of the drug.
It works by injecting into the body molecules smaller than the cocaine molecule which adhere to it thereby increasing its weight enough to cause the body to manufacture antibodies to combat it.
"In this way, the particles of cocaine do not cross the blood-brain barrier. That is, they don't get to the brain of the user and he avoids the effects of the substance," Álvarez Vara said.
Once tested and proven effective, the new treatment could increase the number of requests for de-addiction by cocaine users, which in 2006 numbered in excess of 23,000.
According to the National Drug Plan report, cocaine killed about 800 people over the past year in Spain and was present in about 70 percent of all people who died from drug consumption, almost three times more than a decade ago.
The study warns that habitual users of cocaine have 24 times the risk of suffering heart attacks as non-users.
