Cocaine abuse during pregnancy can affect seriously and in different ways, the baby in the womb. Just as marijuana, cocaine can cause a baby with low weight. This is mainly due to the fact that cocaine produces an increase risk of miscarriage, premature onset of labor and also causes poor growth in babies. Unlike normal-weight babies, babies who have a small birth weight are more likely to die within their first month of life. They are also more prone to disabilities such as cerebral palsy and developmental disabilities.

Here are some other effects produced by cocaine on babies:

• Imperfections of the urinary system
• Imperfections of the heart
• Irreversible brain damage
• Reduced motor skills
• Feeding difficulties
• Sleep Disorders
• Even death

It was used to be a glamorous drug, today is the use of cocaine has become quite normal. Especially in their twenties experts show that the drug is very popular. In the United Kingdom the number of young people leave their help cocaine addiction in the past three years nearly doubled. The cessation clinics flows.

Really good you do not have to look for cocaine. The exclusivity is off and that creates a substantial increase in the number of users. Although cocaine is indeed a hard drug use now appears to be similar to that of cannabis.

Source: HLN

LONDON – Scientists have developed a vaccine that could help Cocaine Junkie of their addiction. Testing in the United States have shown that half of the drug addicts who received half years of the drug could not touch. That the British newspaper The Guardian reported yesterday.

The TA-CD vaccine, developed by a British pharmaceutical company, prevents users get high when they take cocaine. And that feeling is, in the company exactly the reason people use cocaine.

According to director of the company Xenova Oxlade is the way all people tested in three trials. It means that the vaccine prevents cocaine from the blood in the brains come, so the user is not high. “If someone in a rehab has taken the vaccine and after one months use cocaine again, he is not high and he is not addicted again.”

A British aid worker spoke of an addiction “very interesting study. It is clear in its view that the vaccine works well for some cocaine addicts, but she fears that some people will switch to other drugs to still get the kick.

Cocaine is popularly called by a non-addictive party drug, but many scientists still have significant psychological addiction symptoms found. People rehabilitation camps often physical complaints. The British Conference on Crack and Cocaine (an information and assistance center), a cocaine addiction ultimately as serious as a heroin addiction extract, as with any social consequences of this debt and job losses.

Big news of the APPM-skating team: in a press release, the appointment of Jan Ykema unveiled as assistant coach. Perhaps even more remarkable is that the statement more than his turbulent private life refers to the Olympic silver in 1988, the 500 meter of Calgary.

Thus, the cocaine addiction of Fries to have lasted fifteen years and “his real estate agent and much more” through ruined. Ykema used, all problems, forced a long time to accommodate his car, his home town in Harlingen, we know now.

But now the ’skate hero “again a few years back on track and he warned school students about the dangers of drug use. “John has his life back under control but still lacks one thing: the rink,” states the press release issued by sponsor APPM.

What a frankness, deputy manager of Team Kirsten Auwema APPM.

“Yeah, but John is also candid about his own past. In the TV program of Hugo Borst has already explained everything he did. He is direct and honest, just like the team. ”

Is it a conscious decision about life with someone involved with the team?

“John likes to tell about skating. But he sees this job as a return to society. He also explains why the skaters that their own lives in order not to lose. ”

That he would guard against the dangers of the megalomaniacal existence, as the sponsor of the press release says.

“That’s it.”

But Jacques has the King, who plays for his faith, no objection to the appointment of Ykema.

“No, not at all. Jacques is open to everyone. He has, with the other drivers may decide on the appointment of January So that goes to our team. Nobody gets something in his stomach when he does not feel split. Very democratic. “

When we speak of addiction as substance addiction.

Heroin addiction is a problem that causes great alarm.

It is considered drug addiction as a disease and not going away because:

is good business
Many people cannot live without drugs
The drug has been around since man exists.

Many addicts do not realize that addiction is harmful.

Amphetamines, cocaine and cannabis drugs are called traitors because not warn of brain damage.

In the case of heroin is two days to addiction.

Stereotypical notion of effect: People take drugs because you need to change your state of consciousness. Each drug has its primary effect may be modified by each person’s individual variables.

Drug addiction is the result of a triple-action system:

- Chemically
own person (character, way of being …)
social level (social context family, community, education …)

A drug not only has major effects on the physical level is also important effect on the social level, family, school, society.

Psychopharmacological parameters:

Injection: subcutaneous, intravenous and intramuscular instant effect

snorting (heroin)

smoked and inhaled (cannabis, heroin, cocaine …)

eaten, swallowed rectal
ABSORPTION: because it runs from its point of introduction DISTRIBUTION drug is distributed as between the various parts of the driven and operates in the body
DISSOLUTION neutralization or metabolic process.

The doses are very important in consumption and addiction.

The word comes from the drug addict = slavery chronic state of intoxication or regular consumption generated by a natural or synthetic drugs.

Features:

invincible desire to continue taking drug and take it by all means to increase the dose trend (tendency to tolerance)
physical and psychological dependence to the effects of the drug
Adverse effects for him and his social environment.

Habituation:

Results of repeated consumption of a drug. Features:
compulsive desire not to take the drug for its pleasurable effect little tendency to increase dose
Some psychic dependence but no physical type. Only harmful to the individual and not for society.

Medicines, drugs:

A substance introduced into the organism may modify one or more of its functions.

Drugs causing dependence: is one that can produce a living organism in a state of physical dependence, psychological or both.

Abuse:

Persistent or sporadic excessive use that is inconsistent with the use medically acceptable.

To prevent an increase in drug consumption and hence of these diseases, Dr. Jose Angel Arbesú, coordinator SEMERGEN Mental Health, said the primary care physician has an important role in the prevention, detection and treatment of addicts.

As explained, the physician must “prevent addictions, implementing initiatives to modify and improve the quality of life for individuals, encouraging individual self and collective resistance to the drug supply, mainly in adolescents and young adults, asking about their behaviors health and risk factors ”

It may also establish “early detection of addiction by clinical interview, physical examination and complementary tests. For this, the doctor stressed the need “more time, resources and capacity.”

Arbesú emphasized that, while most consumed drugs are cannabis and cocaine, “there is a considerable increase in consumption of legal drugs like alcohol and hipnosedantes. These drugs are currently the most common addictions that can be seen in Primary Care”.

It is no longer a young age profile, but mainly women from age 60, with personal problems, low self-esteem and low tolerance for frustration. The doctor recalled that these drugs also have consequences for health as “phenomena of tolerance and psychological dependence with both a growing need for dose to achieve the effect, impaired control over consumption and causes physical symptoms of withdrawal, such as include intense cravings, malaise, agitation, tachycardia and muscle aches.

Like the strip to the mountain goat, some people have a small mutation in their DNA that predisposes them to cocaine addiction once they try it. Although this is a very preliminary finding, a team of researchers has found a gene that could explain why one in 10 people taking cocaine become dependent on this drug.

“The important thing is that we have found a first gene linked to vulnerability to cocaine addiction,” he explained IMABIS Foundation in Malaga, one of the Spanish scientists who collaborated in this study.

Although the brain is still today a great mystery, the continuing investigation of the body sheds little flashes of light on its operation. One thing we know is that drugs can give pleasure and addiction to act on the reward circuits. Cocaine, in particular, work by increasing the concentration of dopamine (the pleasure neurotransmitter) in the neurons of this system, thereby strengthening its consumption.

Based on this knowledge, researchers posed CaMKIV your attention. This enzyme is a major modulator of a protein called CREB, historically related to addiction, “says Ainhoa Bilbao, another of the researchers, from the Central Institute of Mental Health in Germany. “What we wanted was to find out if he adds the actors involved in the activation of CREB have something to do with addiction, and it turned to CaMKIV.

The most complex, yet more revolutionary, their studies was to create some mice that were used to study the precise function of this enzyme in addiction. They could do it the classic form, eliminating the CaMKIV gene throughout the body, or a “mutation restrictive, inhibiting gene expression only in cells of the dopamine reward system, which are what ultimately addictions behind.

Thanks to this work animal model “we are confident that the finding is very precise,” continues this Spanish researcher. And what they found was doubly surprising. First, the finding that CaMKIV protects against addiction, as the mice that lacked this gene had an answer psychomotor and reward much more marked in the administration of cocaine. That is, they became addicted more easily.

The concentrations are so small that “even breathing would be 1000 years to consume the equivalent dose.

The air of Madrid and Barcelona contains molecules of cocaine, according to a research team comprised of researchers or Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), the Center for Energy, Environment and Technology (CIEMAT) and the Catalan Institute for Research Water (ICRA) have developed a method to detect drug for particles in the air in the two cities.

Researchers have analyzed the airborne particles in suspension and have certified the presence of up to five classes of drugs in the two study areas of the cities. Although not clear in which of the two cities has been found more drugs, have indicated that the data “are not representative of the air in two cities, and these were reflected in very specific areas where expected greater consumption.

Thus, the researchers found up to 17 components belonging to five different drugs in both cities, but noted that most of the particles that were found are attributable to cocaine. Components were also found amphetamines, opiates, cannabinoids and lysergic acid.

Regarding the level of drug concentration in the air, clarified that he is “in such small quantities that even breathing is 1000 years come to consume the equivalent dose.

Finally, they say that what they want with this technique is to “provide tools to evaluate the drug enters the population quickly and anonymously.

Most weekends

In all samples of the tests were conducted in Madrid and Barcelona were found detectable levels of cocaine and its metabolite, benzoylecgonine, and a cannabinoid, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).

The concentrations vary between 29 and 850 psicogramos (a psychograms is a billionth of a gram) per cubic meter. The concentrations were highest on weekends.

The study, published in the journal Analytical Chemistry in its online edition on May 8, has been carried out by installing a quartz micro fiber filters which collected particles suspended in the air.

Prolonged exposure to cocaine can cause permanent changes in how genes are turned on and off in the brain, a finding that may lead more effective treatments for many types of addictions, researchers estadoundienses.

A study in mice conducted by the team of Ian Maze, of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, found that chronic cocaine addiction prevented a specific enzyme performs his work of suppression of some genes in the brain circuits for pleasure.

This effect made even more longed rodents drugs.

The research helps explain how cocaine use changes the brain, said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health, which funded the study published in the journal Science.

“This discovery is enabling a new understanding of how the repeated use of drugs in the long term modifies the function of neurons,” Volkow said in a telephone interview.

For the study, the team administered to a group of young mice repeated doses of cocaine and another, repeated doses of saline and then single cocaine.

The authors found that one way in which cocaine alters the brain’s reward circuitry is via gene repression 9A, which produces an enzyme that plays a key role in gene activation and deactivation.

Other studies found that animals exposed to cocaine for a period of time undergo drastic changes in how genes are turned on and off, and develop a strong preference for cocaine.

This work helps explain how this happens, Volkow said, and even lead to new ways of overcoming addiction.

In the study, Maze and his colleagues showed that these effects could be reversed by increasing the activity of the gene 9A.

“When that is done, completely reversed the effects of chronic use of cocaine,” he added.

Maze noted that this mechanism will not only reduce dependence on cocaine and could lead to a new area of research in addictions to other drugs, alcohol and even nicotine.

It is difficult to escape the clutches of drugs, but not impossible. Thanks to improved treatments, the numbers of former drug users have increased. Two thirds of those addicted to heroin and crack (smoked form of cocaine) who undergo therapy or consumption drop significantly reduced, according to a study on the effectiveness of cessation programs in England.

The work, published in The Lancet, shows the evolution of more than 14,000 patients treated for at least six months. The numbers of abstinence during the 28 days before the last clinical review were high: 42% of heroin addicts and 57% of crack users.

A not insignificant percentage of those who failed to leave the substances were able, at least, reduce their consumption: 29% of those who were ‘hooked’ on heroin and 8% of those who smoked cocaine.

However, success rates were lower among those who were addicted to both drugs. The authors speculate that, if it is difficult to leave a still more complex change of habits in front of two highly addictive substances.

The choice of heroin and crack to evaluate the efficacy of detoxification programs is no accident. “They are different drugs that produce more damage at the biological, psychological and social,” says Alberto Sancho, MD of the Addictive Behaviors Unit of Xativa (Valencia).

This expert believes the study results in English are extrapolated to Spain, because in our country we have also benefited from numerous contributions to the therapeutic armamentarium.

In the case of addiction to heroin, methadone therapy is essential, accompanied by a psychological intervention. For cocaine there is no specific drug, so the tactics are based more on controlling the symptoms, using different drugs and more effective methods of psychology.

“The motivational strategies and relapse prevention have evolved a lot,” Sancho values. “The pact with the patient treatment is the best tool,” he adds.

Advances in knowledge of neurology and psychiatry have also provided valuable weapon to the treatment of addictions, mood-stabilizing drugs (which stabilize the mood), antidepressants and antipsychotics.

Another key to the smooth functioning of the drug therapies is currently being addressed with a global view, taking into account biological, psychological and social. “We must take into account the psychiatric disorders that produce drugs, but also organic problems, which may be neurological, cardiac, liver apostille …”, the doctor.

Sancho is optimistic about the prospects for recovering addicts, while acknowledging that a good number of them do not ever go to a detoxification center.

But most of those who do use the health system able to overcome the problem or at least significantly improve their quality of life.

The addiction specialist belies the image of addictive behaviors units as sites with predominantly patients ‘irrecoverable’. “The resident physicians (MIR) formed me often say that they expected something else. But see many positive results,” says.