It may have only been tested in mice so far, but researchers have found a new way of treating the meth-addicted animals by simply erasing all their memories associated with the drug. This is a fantastic breakthrough and brings a lot of hope to those suffering from a similar addiction and want to once again, gain control of their own lives.
The biggest problem in treating addicts is not letting them return to the thing they are trying to get away from. With users of some drugs, such as methamphetamine, MDMA, or cocaine, this is extremely hard for them, and the chance of a relapse happening soon after therapy ends is high. Often this is because the memory of what they liked about the drug is too strong to the damper and the person gives in to temptation. However, with thanks to researchers at the University of Florida, there is light at the end of the tunnel for addicts.
This new study involved using a drug that only affects the memory associated with a psychostimulant’s addictive response, but even though it was successful in mice, it’ll be at least another five years before it makes it to the human market, if at all. Earlier studies revealed that memories created from using a psychostimulant drug, such as methamphetamine, are completely different from normal memories. While normal memories are supported by actin, which locks them in your brain, in many drug riddled memories, the actin never actually stabilizes.
Using this information, researchers created a drug that would disrupt the actin and stop any real memories from forming. But, they decided that because actin is also heavily involved in muscle works and helping the heart contract, it wasn’t safe to do this. So instead, they used another molecule called nonmuscle myosin IIB that help actin work but doesn’t affect how it’s involved in the function of any muscles. Their newly created drug, Blebbistatin works by disrupting the nonmuscle myosin IIB and erases the psychoactive drug memory in the process. Experts say the effects only work on this type of memory and will last for up to 30 days. However, once given the go ahead, this is plenty enough time for addicts to forget all the good things they know about the drug and concentrate on recovering and starting a whole new life.
Actin is a family of globular multifunctional proteins that form microfilaments. It is found in essentially all eukaryotic cells. Via Wikipedia
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