Promising antidote for cocaine overdose in the works

There may be an antidote for cocaine overdoses just a few human trials away. Scientists at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego have created an injectable solution that has reversed the effects of what would have been a fatal cocaine overdose - in mice.  Cocaine: A brief history of blow Is cocaine silently killing its users? "This would be the first specific antidote for cocaine toxicity," senior author Dr. Kim Janda, professor in the department of immunology and microbial science and director of The Worm Institute for Research and Medicine at the Scripps Research Institute told Science Daily. "It's a human antibody so it should be relatively safe, it has a superior affinity for cocaine, and we examined it in a cocaine overdose model that mirrors a real-life scenario," he said. The study is published in the April 18 issue of the journal Molecular Pharmaceuticals. Instead of an active vaccine that would help the body create antibodies against harmful particles, the researchers created a passive vaccine. A passive vaccine puts artificially produced antibodies in the patient's bloodstream, which in turn bind to cocaine molecules. Deaths of mice, which metabolize cocaine just like humans, decreased when injected with the antidote before and after the drug was administered. Janda said the vaccine can also help prevent near-term relapses and may help in detox situations. "A lot of people that overdose end up going back to the drug rather quickly but this antibody would stay in their circulation for a few weeks at least, and during that time the drug wouldn't have an effect on them," Janda told Science Daily. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among the deaths attributed to drug overdose, cocaine, heroin and opioid painkillers are the most common substances involved. Cocaine overdoses caused over 6,000 deaths in 2006. The National Institute on Drug Abuse says cocaine use accounted for nearly 423,000 emergency department visits.