Diabetes Drug Possible Treatment for Cocaine Addiction

A drug used for the medical management of type 2 diabetes could be just as effective in treating drug addiction, including cocaine, researchers have revealed. Gregg Stanwood, PhD, assistant professor of Pharmacology and an investigator within the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center and Vanderbilt Brain Institute, stated, "What we have demonstrated is that a brain mechanism already known to be therapeutic for the treatment of diabetes also appears to be implicated in at least certain types of drug addiction." "We found that this drug called Exendin-4 … reduces the rewarding effects of cocaine in animals. We suspect that this is a general mechanism that will translate to additional drugs of abuse, especially other stimulants like amphetamine and methamphetamine." The findings have been just published online as a Letter to the Editor in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, Oct 2012