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Alcoholism Vaccine Makes Alcohol Intolerable To Drinkers
Hugh Pickens writes "Ariel Schwartz reports that researchers are working on an alcoholism vaccine that makes alcohol intolerable to anyone who drinks it. The vaccine builds on what happens naturally in certain people — about 20% of the Japanese, Chinese, and Korean population — with an alcohol intolerance mutation. Normally, the liver breaks down alcohol into an enzyme that's transformed into the compound acetaldehyde (responsible for that nasty hangover feeling), which in turn is degraded into another enzyme. The acetaldehyde doesn't usually have time to build up before it's broken down. But people with the alcohol intolerance mutation lack the ability to produce that second enzyme; acetaldehyde accumulates, and they feel terrible. Dr. Juan Asenjo and his colleagues have come up with a way to stop the synthesis of that second enzyme via a vaccine, mimicking the mutation that sometimes happens naturally. 'People have this mutation all over the world. It's like how some people can't drink milk,' says Asenjo. Addressing the physiological part of alcohol addiction is just one piece of the battle. Addictive tendencies could very well manifest in other ways; instead of alcohol, perhaps former addicts will move on to cigarettes. Asenjo admits as much: 'Addiction is a psychological disease, a social disease. Obviously this is only the biological part of it.'"
Wait, no alcohol? Shot as in vaccine? Fuck that.
What needing a drink is really like...
This is one vaccine some people would want to avoid. Imagine a winelover accidentally getting stuck with one and having their passion ruined for life.
Stocks in Irish, Scottish, and Russian companies unexpectedly soar.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Most people despised their first taste of alcohol but many came back for seconds. Like most things, it depends.
Tintin and the Picaros anyone?
Seriously? This is news?
The EXACT SAME effect can be produced by feeding people shaggy mane mushrooms, (which are perfectly edible) due to the presence of a substance called Coprine.
Coprine acts similarly to a well known medicinal substance called Disulfriram" that has been used to treat alcoholism via this mechanism for nearly 100 years!
So, what you are telling me is that this doctor has essentially re-invented the wheel, and that this is news?
"Normally, the liver breaks down alcohol into an enzyme"
wow, I didn't know EtOH could be broken down into a multi-kilodalton protein! That's some fine science writin' there, Lou.
It could put you at a higher risk of developing liver cancer.
http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-info/healthyliving/alcohol/howdoesalcoholcausecancer/how-does-alcohol-cause-cancer
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
I can see this is a good option for those that really want to stop drinking. But.... drinking is a twisted cocktail of the poison alcohol and the feelings that go with it (or lack of perhaps, the numbing) that keep people drinking. So this may be the push that people trying to quit need. If the just the drinking makes you feel sick enough to not want to drink anymore, more power to them! It may not be a perfect solution for those trying to stop, but at least it is another option. I just hope the vaccine itself is not so expensive as to make it only available to the wealthy to use.
Make another vaccine (or possibly something in pill form), that increases that second enzyme, and makes hangovers less and less painful!!
I never knew what a hangover was till I was in my mid-30's...then BAM....
Now, sure I can still drink quite a bit....not even getting very drunk at times, but man, I pay for it for 2+ days now at times.
If this is what happened to me....I'd pay a TON of money to be able to regenerate that 2nd enzyme production to lower the acetaldehyde (sp?) and lower the hangover pain.
Drinking is fun for those that can handle their booze....if you could get rid of the hangover, it would be great for those that still like to party a bit.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
That's a nightmare!
- an Irishman
I don't think they understand what a "vaccine" is. Can we (especially the media) stop throwing that word around for everything? A vaccine immunizes you against a disease, by getting the body to produce antibodies.
If this works. Expect to see people get court-ordered to get an injection after alcohol-related offenses. The CJ will do anything and everything in their power to make the criminal's life unbearable, rob them of the self-esteem, and keep them in the system.
cat sig >
We created alcohol in part because it was the only way to store the energy in grains for human consumption over long ranges of time where the grains would have otherwise rotted. Beer was supposedly invented in Egypt precisely for this. That it had entertainment or recreational value was secondary back then.
Now someone makes a 'vaccine' that reduces the human body's ability to process one kind of energy source we have. This is an evolutionary step backwards.
Is a carne asada burrito vaccine. Side effects include wanting to lay on the couch and increased nostalgia for 80's movies.
which in turn is degraded into another enzyme
Should say
which in turn is degraded by another enzyme
It makes no sense for a product of alcohol degradation to become an enzyme on it's own.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
If you came up with something that would basically give you a super-hangover from alcohol, by blocking the breakdown of a chemical responsible for hangovers... it seems to reason you could also figure out how to cause faster breakdown of the same chemical. If it was really mostly responsible for hangovers, it seems like that would make billions of dollars as the first truly reliable hangover preventative. I know I'd buy it (if there weren't other worse side effects).
Meanwhile, I can't imagine many alcoholics would care. They'd just *drink more* to counteract the effects of the hangover. You know, like they already do?
Will be 12 stepping fanatics who think that the only way to get over an addiction / bad habit is through their fucked up religion.
1) Parents paying to inject their high school kids without asking what the kids think about it.
2) High school and college kids pranking each other by injecting their ex-'friends' with it.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
This is one of the most horrible and stupidest summaries I've read in a long time. Enzymes are biochemical catalysts. Ethanol and acetaldehyde are substrates. The substrates get converted into end products with the help of enzymes and energy. Ethanol does not get converted *into* an enzyme known as acetaldehyde. Ethanol gets converted to acetaldehyde by the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase by the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase, through the loss of one hydrogen atom. In the next step, acetaldehyde gets converted into acetic acid (same thing as in vinegar) by the enzyme aldehyde dehydrogenase through the loss of another hydrogen atom. Acetaldehyde a lot more toxic than acetic acid. If you block the enzyme aldehyde dehydrogenase (which lacks naturally in a minority of East Asians), there will be an accumulation of excess acetaldehyde, causing very noxious symptoms. This is exactly what drugs like disulfiram ("antabuse") do. What a badly written summary. Both the submitter and the editor need to read some biochemistry or learn to use google before posting rubbish.
Doesn't Anabuse already do this?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Well, maybe that explains why I get a headache a few hours after having a few beers.
I know someone who has this alcohol intolerance. She still drinks, in spite of the rotten feeling afterwords.
In some cases, alcoholism is about social and psychological dependence. Not the buzz from the chemistry. If people drink because they need it to fit in to a crowd, getting sick won't stop that.
Have gnu, will travel.
There is also a genetic basis for nicotine tolerance. The mechanism is essentially the same. There is an gene that codes for an enzyme which removes nicotine from the bloodstream. This gene has several different alleles that code for more or less effective versions of the same enzyme. Individuals who have the allele that codes for the most effective enzyme are heavy smokers if they smoke. They smoke a cigarette, receive the desired stimulation, and then the enzyme clears the nicotine. Thus they desire another dose soon afterward. Individuals who produce the least effective version of the enzyme get sick when they smoke. The enzyme fails to clear the toxin in a reasonable time and they feel ill, sometimes vomiting. Individuals producing middling effective versions can be occasional smokers. Read more here.
If researchers can create a treatment for alcohol in this way, they can probably create a smoking treatment as well. It is unlikely, though, that the treatment would alleviate withdrawal symptoms on its own. This approach likely will lead to treatments for other addiction problems also.
If there come sto exist effective treatments for illegal drugs, there will be serious socio-political implications. The rational for the the war on drugs will be completely destroyed. If people can choose effective treatment, then there will be no unwilling chemical dependence. This will decrease crime, health problems, and other negative effects of dangerous drugs. So there will be no basis for illegality. Will that change the politics surrounding drugs? I don't think so.
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
When I was in the military, there were some guys that came to work 3 or 4 times a week (almost every week) with hangovers.
I'm not not talking about the "I'm a little queasy, give me an asprin" kind of hangovers, but rather the "shhhh, you're breathing too loud" kind of hangovers.
Sure, there are some people who will stop, but there are too many that won't.
Now if it caused illness fast enough they haven't even finished their beer, then it might have an effect. Of course, those drugs already exist and are in use.
Also, it has been proven, they don't solve alcoholism, but they do help in it's treatment.
Uh, except it's not like that... inability to tolerate milk can be from several distinct causes, and most cases are unrelated to any human mutations.
Most of the time, it's a gut bacteria issue, and can be "cured" with kefir and yoghurt and probiotics. Sometimes the "cure" has to be maintained because of an inability to maintain a stable population of lactophilic bacteria in the gut, but sometimes it's one-shot and done.
Sometimes, it's an allergy, and attempting the yoghurt cure can be extremely painful and unproductive (potentially fatal, although I've never heard of that actually happening).
And yeah, sometimes it's a mutation. That's the least common reason for inability to digest milk. So you sound like a quack, doc.
Except that in most cases are these addicts not just addicted to being high and they happen to choose alcohol because it is free and cheap?
Is it not exceedingly likely that if we inoculated every drunk with this today that in a week 80% of them would be crack addicts or similarly worse off?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Obviously not someone who ever looked at Biochem or even basic physiology.
A cure to alcohol addiction?
I'll drink to that!
How exactly does alcohol break down into an enzyme? I think you mean that alcohol is broken down into acetaldehyde by an enzyme, and the acetaldehyde is broken down by another enzyme.
Closest thing I've been able to find thus far is this paper from 2010: Viral vectors for the treatment of alcoholism: Use of metabolic flux analysis for cell cultivation and vector production
The article didn't make too much sense at first, as human acetaldhyde dehydrogenases are located either in the cytosol or mitochondria; vaccine-stimulated antibodies would not be expected to be able to block the enzyme's activity. A gene-therapy agent would be able to accomplish the task, however.
I'll work on a vaccine to make me inmune to hangovers. I am sure will make more profit.
My wife has natural alcohol intolerance. She can't even stand the smell of it. Kind of annoying that I can't get her drunk!
It's a good thing some of us live in states or provinces where we have other choices, besides alcohol.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Actually, I tend to drink for the taste. I prefer Ice Cider, a good red wine with meat, a nice Gewurztraminer with salads, and various mixed drinks.
Don't like most beers, gin, whiskey, but there are some decent rums.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
You must be still suffering. There is no way to 'get over' an addiction. You can only stop imbibing, you will always be an addict. The 12 step program uses peoples existing religious beliefs, it proposes no new concept of God or belief. A 12 step program asks only that you admit you are powerless over your addiction and only a power greater than yourself can help you overcome it. There is no definition of what that greater power is, some people use God, some atheists find whatever concept works for them, but they all use the same 12 step program and it is the only thing that has been found to work so far. No I don't have any addictions and I'm not in a 12 step program.
I mean, I can't stand the taste, how do you people even drink this stuff? The only way I can drink an alcoholic beverage is if it's watered so completely I can't even taste it. Not to mention I don't even understand the appeal, I have no desire to have my mental functions impaired in any way whatsoever, and I find *drinkers* of alcohol intolerable as well. I can understand drugs that might be mind expanding, like LSD or mushrooms or whatever, but this blacking out drunk, acting obnoxious, and waking up with a hangover I just don't get.
A product called "Budweiser" has been making tiny amounts of alcohol intolerable to drinkers for years.
The Hellgrammite Method
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KFASt7gDM4
awesome. i was thinking the very same thing. it's like a stephen king story.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
This sounds like a longer lasting form of anabuse http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anabuse. I imagine that the injection / longer lasting stuff might make sense in one way: courts will probably offer you a "take this injection twice a year or go to jail". Could be interesting.
What if a 'drug' were discovered which allowed the alcohol intolerant to actually enjoy alcohol? Would this be morally questionable? The market would be huge and as we all know, the market is good at making the morally questionable, morally acceptable.
Suicide (or murder if this is forced upon them by the State).
...on My Strange Addiction: Acetaldehyde shots
"hell, I just drink the vial and don't shoot it" said one user.
Film at 11
In Bloomberg's New York, the alcohol vaccine will be mandatory.
This is exactly what Antabuse did. And if I remember correctly, the FDA banned it because people were being killed by a buildup of actelehyde (very similar to formaldehyde).
Move along folks, nothing new here.
I know there are already drugs that are designed to make people nauseous when they drink. The addictions centre here stopped backing those drugs as too many people were drinking on it. They may even have been pulled off the market -not sure. I think people underestimate the lengths an addict will go to to ingest their drug of choice. When I was drinking I would have done some disgusting things when I was running out of booze.
Imagine how pissed off you'd be if somebody stuck this into you at the bus stop?
I agree. There is already a drug that does this, and it's been relatively ineffective in treatment.
http://www.drugs.com/antabuse.html
It worked decently well.
Fellowship 9/11
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disulfiram is used extensively in Sweden to treat bad drinkers and has been for a very long time. It is called Antabus there.
...to make people feel fat, bloated, and lethargic when they ate too much to prevent over-eating...
This would surely change the world we live in today! ...oh wait...
So what's the difference between this and Antabuse (Disulfiram)?
Where's my old freak Drinkypoo?
Free Martian Whores!
TFA has no links to any papers or articles about this supposed "vaccine"
The research group's web page has no direct reference to any such vaccine.
What is being hyped is pre-clinical *animal* trials (cf. http://advhealth.com/alcohol-vaccine/) which haven't even begun yet.
Move along. Nothing to see here. At least not for some time.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
Kill it with fire!
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
Poorly written, not unusual here.
Ethanol is turned into acetaldehyde by an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase, and the acetaldehyde is further broken down.
Accumulation of acetaldehyde is why asians get such red cheeks when they drink. They can take antihistimines to cover it up a bit.
Please put that into the water supply.
I live near a famous street full of bars. The amount of anti-social behaviour and frankly speaking dumbfucks I see over the weekend is enough to make the best man doubt humanity as a species. Most of it, thanks to alcohol.
I'm sure most of these people are tolerable when they're sober. But what I see of them when they come here is in the "they should have their license to breathe withdrawn" category.
And that's not even taking into account the drunk driving, alcoholism and other measurable damages to society and individuals.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The alcohol flush reaction they refer to isn't just about feeling unpleasant. Yes, people with two copies of the gene for it rarely drink. But those with only one copy (that is, they have some of the enzymes to metabolize acetaldehyde), while less likely to drink, often do so anyway (because they can take it, and they enjoy the feeling or feel socially obligated). And when they do, they raise their risk of esophageal (and I believe a few other cancers) significantly more than someone who drinks the same amount but lacks the flush reaction. Acetaldehyde is highly carcinogenic; most people just get rid of it quickly enough to limit the damage.
In short: If you give this to alcoholics, a large number of them will tolerate the side-effects and you've just dramatically increased their risk of cancer.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
I have never met an alcoholic who wasn't already addicted to cigarettes prior to drinking. Arguably, alcoholism and alcohol abuse can stem from cigarette addiction when cigarettes no longer cut it and leave the user with discontentment.
Ever hear of Baclofen? This stuff can work wonders for alcoholism.
See also: The End of My Addiction by Olivier Ameisen.
Idiots have gotten "Alcoholism" classified as a disease, so technically a treatment that immunizes you against alcoholism would be a vaccine in the "one time immunization to a disease" sense.
At least in the common vernacular. In medical terminology vaccines likely do refer strictly to immunization against virii.
Virii is not a word.
Viri is a word, but is the plural of Vir.
Many alcoholics do want to stop drinking, but it's a hard thing to do. Not only do they have to not drink right now, but they have to not drink five minutes from now, and five minutes after that, and five minutes after that, and so on, forever. Not drinking is an endless string of decisions not to drink, while drinking again is just one decision that's easy to make. The result is that even those who very much want to stop drinking have a very difficult time about it.
Imagine, for example, someone offers you a magic button that you can press which will simultaneously deposit a million dollars in your bank account and kill some random person. You might be a moral person and thus not want to push the button, but imagine they follow you around with it constantly for months on end. Are you sure that at some point, after a bad day, with everyone getting on your nerves, that you wouldn't in a moment of desperation say "fuck the world" and hit the button?
Now imagine the same situation slightly reversed. The person offers you a similar button, but for this one to give you the million dollars and kill someone, all you have to do is NOT push the button for 30 consecutive days. ...and, again, they follow you around with it constantly. Even if you're an immoral person, and don't really care about anyone else, you might still have a good day now and then when you decide that random people don't deserve to die.
A vaccine like this would similarly reverse the situation for alcoholics. Even an alcoholic who only kind of wants to stop drinking could probably convince themselves to get a shot once a month. True, it wouldn't do anything to help those who truly do not want to stop drinking, but it's hard to imagine anyone who is truly an alcoholic (by definition, having their alcoholism negatively impact their life) who doesn't, for at least a few minutes a month, think that perhaps they should quit drinking.
Dehydration is definitely a major contributor to hangover. However, it isn't the entire picture. The next two major contributing factors to hangover (or other deleterious effects) are:
...so, ensure your drinks have a positive sodium balance for what you're losing, and backstop your vitamin B's.
1) Hyponatremia (which can lead to potomania, whether you are drinking beer or liquor), and
2) Vitamin B deficiency, particularly B1 and B12 (I personally use this, because high doses of water-soluble vitamins doesn't cause any issue). Note Wernicke's encephalopathy.
Applying these two approaches have effectively eliminated any hangover I would have expected to experience (aside from being tired, but that may be attributed to staying up until 3 AM—drinking or not). It has worked well for me for almost two years now.
Also, ensuring you consume adequate protein may help to forestall liver damage; I prefer to err on the side of high-protein intake.
All of these "vaccines" to cure addictions concern me. Thankfully I don't think any of them have been massively effective & I can see the benefits for a small portion of the population....... But. I can just kind of thing going downhill REAL fast. What would have happened if these kinds of things had been available during the "Temperance Movement" (the people who brought us prohibition). I imagine many temperance organizations (Churches, Woman's Groups, etc) would have held "vaccination drives" where they would have mutilated a significant portion of a generation of Americans. The same goes for the current attempts at Marijuana, Cocaine, and other "vaccines" currently being tested, if they attain significant effectiveness I have little doubt that there will be a push by some groups to have children & repeat offenders coerced into being "treated". Its a sad state in our society that we all to often attack the symptoms of problems (crime, drug use, violence, etc) instead of their causes (poverty, lack of opportunities, desperation, mental illness).
Short term solution, the droogs will just return
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
That was the worst "science writeup" I have read in ages. Acetaldehyde is not an enzyme but a molecule. That molecule is produced by the liver alcohol dehydrogenase from ethanol. The enzyme that breaks Acetaldehyde down before it falls apart into all kinds of nasty side products is Acetaldehyde dehydrogenase.
And creating an immune reaction against Acetaldehyde dehydrogenase would sure cause hangovers - as it would mean the cell starts attacking every liver cell that produces that enzyme.
With horrible results.
There's a drug that does this. The paper mentions that the drug requires the patient to cooperate(regularly take the drug). Sometimes patients take the drug as part of rehab, somewhat willingly. BUT, knowing alcohol will make them feel sick, they still get drunk.
Wouldnt it be better to create a pill or injection that allowed you to immediately sober up so you can drive? Why would anyone want to knowingly vaccinate themselves with this, and not be able to properly break down alcohol?
Passed out drunk.
Excuse me, but doesn't anyone realize that this is not a vaccine? Someone, PLEASE, look up the definition of vaccine.
...... and idiots rule the world....
... if it works, that is. That would save 2.5 millions lives yearly.
That's getting a little creepy.
Alcoholics drink alcohol in the morning to minimize the effect of acetaldehyde, so why won't this "vaccine" make things worse?
you need to take cysteine. or possibly NAC (nacetyl-cysteine just more bioavail, turns into cysteine and probably not work paying for, just buy a kg a cysteine powder.. if you look you'll find it for $50 and it will last a long time), associated interchangeable aminoacids like methionine may help (there has been discussions to add this to paracetamol to prevent liver damage) ... cysteine is the cofactor which is needed by the enzyme that degrades the acetaldehyde ... almost certainly you have enough enzyme but it cant do its job because generally as we age our cysteine cycle blocks up and degrades... homocysteine builds up (a cardio risk factor) .. etc.. read about the cysteine cycle on wiki.. defo do this if nothing else. because basically you cant just take tonnes of cysteine because it may all just end up as homocysteine ... you need to keep the bodys own cysteine cycle running well.. so the b6 b9 and b12 are v important. and TMG which drives a parallel (usually minior) methylation pathway can also help reconvert homocysteine.
trimethylglycine is also able to drive the cysteine cycle and is used to treat genetic homocysteinuria .. also b9 b12 and b6 will help.
TMG is high in beetroot (was called betain cause it was isolated from beets), but actually even higher in quinoa and spinach..
also thiamine is depleted and helps if you drink..
off the top of my head, when mice are are given the LD50 of ethanol 50% die (duh), when given together with cysteine ~80 survive and wit cysteine and B1 thiamine given virtually all survive :P .. its weird,, when i started trying taking cysteine regularly at first i thought it was like i didnt feel alcohol didnt affect me the same, like i wasnt getting as drunk or it felt different. then i realised i was associating the sick feeling of the acetaldehyde with drunkenness. without it it feels cleaner.
cheers
its almost certainly particular aminoacids in the egg yolk.
in fact i will bet that its cysteine. which is the cofactor that lets this enzyme function. so for people with a functioning enzyme its probably not the case that as the age they have less of the enzyme (although this is possible) but more likely their cysteine cycle is blocking/slowing and they have more homocysteine and not enough cysteine.
good way to deplete your cysteine too (drinking)
you need cysteine for glutathione so its no minor issue. b9 b12 b6, and trimethylglycine will all help regenerate cysteine from homocysteine.
intake of cysteine / or nac (more bioavail, but probably not worth the cost) may work short term, but long term you want to get your cycle functioning so as not to simply accumulate homocysteine which is a cardio risk factor..
please read about the cysteine cycle on wiki :P
cheers
This vaccine will be forced on minors in religious families who oppose the consumption of alcohol. Then when these kids are adults, they won't be able to choose to consume alcohol since they will get the horrible hangovers.
Always though my alcoholism was due to my addiction to acetaldehyde and acetic acid, not alcohol per se.
When I swapped out booze for the funky cold Modena, all was right with my world.
Don't think so.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This is none-news. Antabuse was invented almost 100 years ago and does exactly the same thing as this "vaccine."
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
My Mom had pancreatitis and "felt terrible" every time she drank. Her doctor told her, "not another drop". Neither stopped her. Only death due to drinking did.
http://gannebraemorr.com/lol/
Not a subject to be dealt with humor. I'm alive after thirty year addiction. It, addiction, will be replaced with other substances without help. Just a thought.
Will this vaccine also impair the one so receiving the ability to reason as an individual, or will the recipient start behaving like those in "anthill and beehive" cultures?
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