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. (more…)
