Nature – Virus robs addicts of their high: Transgenic carrier inactivates cocaine in rat brains.
The treatment was developed by Kim Janda, a chemist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, and her colleagues. They gave eight rats nasal injections of the virus twice a day for three days and compared them to eight rats that did not receive the treatment. On the fourth day, they gave both groups a dose of cocaine.
The untreated rats behaved in a characteristic way after receiving the drug: sniffing, standing up on their hind legs and rocking backwards and forwards. But the rats that received the virus showed much less severe behaviour.
“If they are not demonstrating this activity, they are probably not feeling the high,” says Janda.