Unable to dominate the effects of cocaine

2003/06/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Biokimika

The cocaine pathway in the brain is more complex than expected. This was announced by the Experimental Biology Encounters held in the US in 2003. Researchers have studied the mechanisms used by this drug in the brain to try to deal with the dependence of cocaine.

Cocaine is already known to affect neurotransmitter transporters such as proteins carrying dopamine, serotonin, and noradrenaline. Basically, cocaine makes transporters difficult and accumulates neurotransmitters, generating euphoria, insomnia and other sensations.

For this reason, they have used transgenic mice without dopamine and noradrenaline transporters to check if they are affected by cocaine. And it seems that cocaine affects these transgenic mice as normal mice. This shows that the mechanism is more complicated than expected. Therefore, they will play with the transporters of serotonin, hoping that they get better results.