New Nicotine Vaccine May Succeed Where Others Have Failed

Zothecula writes: If you're a smoker who's trying to quit, you may recall hearing about vaccines designed to cause the body's immune system to treat nicotine like a foreign invader, producing antibodies that trap and remove it before it's able to reach receptors in the brain. It's a fascinating idea, but according to scientists at California's Scripps Research Institute, a recent high-profile attempt had a major flaw. They claim to have overcome that problem (abstract), and are now developing a vaccine of their own that they believe should be more effective.

Comments

Why would you want this?

[russotto]

You'd still be an addict, just one who could never satisfy his cravings. This sounds more like some sort of torture that an aid to quitting.

Re:Why would you want this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Eventually your body would adapt and you wouldn't have the cravings anymore. Then you would be back to normal, but if you ever pick up the habit again you won't get any benefit, so you will not get re-addicted.

Personally, I think that using this to quit, once you are already addicted, would be horrible. Eventually you would be ok, but it is effectively a cold-turkey approach, and the withdrawal symptoms will be terrible. It would be better to use this only after you have quit, or after you have managed to get your nicotine intake to an acceptable low, so that the withdrawal symptoms don't wreck you.

Re:Why would you want this?

[morcego]

You'd still be an addict, just one who could never satisfy his cravings. This sounds more like some sort of torture that an aid to quitting.

You will always be an addict. I quit smoking over 3 years ago, and I'm still addicted.
After trying various ways of quitting, I ended up talking to a doctor and got Champix prescribed to be, which ended up helping a lot and making it possible for me to quit. When I did quit, the days I suffered the most were when my body was flushing the nicotine out. For this part, a vaccine like this would have been wonderful. Instead of having cramps and throwing up for 2 days (yes, this kind of abstinence syndrome can happen even with nicotine), and still suffering for several days afterwards, it would have made it much easier.

So yeah, I do wish this vaccine existed when I quit, 3 years ago, after smoking 2 packs/day for 20 years.

Re:Why would you want this?

[sjames]

Then it turns out that nicotine use was self-medication and now you can't use any of a new class of drugs being developed that are all based on nicotine. OOPS

Nicotine has been far too politicized. It is practically impossible to find proper research. Most of it conflates smoking and nicotine use. Most of the really nasty effects of smoking are from the many other things in cigarettes, not the nicotine. There is evidence that that includes much of the the addiction. Practically everyone who has switched to e-cigarettes has noticed this. Even though the e-cig is giving you as much or even more nicotine than the cigarette, it somehow doesn't get rid of all the craving at first. There is a definite 3 day to two week period before the user is comfortably on the e-cig. A while after that, most users find that they want the e-cig but not in the urgent way they used to crave a smoke break. Many, if not most, choose to reduce the nicotine level in their ecig even if their intent was never to quit nicotine.

A leading theory is that the harmaline (an MAO inhibitor) found in cigarette smoke is responsible. It potentiates the addictive effect.

Once the tar, particulates, carbon monoxide, and most of the nitrosamines are eliminated from the delivery mechanism, nicotine use is much more benign and for some people, even beneficial.

All of this would be much better known if nicotine wasn't such a political bogeyman.

Re:Required vaccine?

[gatfirls]

Your thought process is scary at a minimum. It does give some insight into how horrible ideas take root once you demonize something/someone though.

Here's my problem with this

[popo]

For one, Nicotine (when smoked) passes the blood-brain barrier within seconds.

The notion that a human antibody can intercept (and neutralize) a foreign substance that quickly is highly questionable. (If not silly).

However, the half-life of nicotine is 1-2 hours, and the metabolites have a half life of up to 20 hours. So let's assume for a minute that the vaccine does have an effect on systemic nicotine 'at some point' over the course of it's metabolization. Okay, fine. But the nicotine still went 'straight upstairs' after that first puff. Which means the only effect I can conceive of here is that the smoker will need another cigarette more quickly.

Is that a good thing?

Of course, IANAD so please correct me if I've got something wrong.