We are trying to develop an active pharmaceutical ingredient to stop addiction of nicotine for smoker. So far in market we find nicotine patch, gum to reduce the addition. We were thinking to apply Levodopa, a precursor of dopamine. We can supplement Levodopa with an inhibitor of peripheral decarboxylation at controlled rate to maintain the required Dopamine level in brain eliminating nicotine dependency.
Hello, nice idea, but I presume it has been tried already in the past. Clinically, I don't remember any PD patient who stopped smoking following installation of L-DOPA-treatment. It occurs that patients on L-DOPA develop funding, compulsive behavior, or some seemingly weird dependance, so it might turn out to be a double-edged sword. It should be some drug interacting with the cerebral alpha-7 receptor (which is interestingly mutated in some forms of nocturnal frontal lobe epilepsy, and patients who smoke have dramatically less seizures). Hope that helped nonetheless.
Hello, Laboni Ahsan. I agree with Dirk Ulbricht; L-DOPA treatment, so as dopaminergic drug regimen, potentially causes other behaviour disorder, like pathological gambling; this adverse effect is observed also in the treatment of Parkinson disease.
Nevertheless, I observed that by treating some smokers with auriculotherapy (ear acupuncture) by neuromodulation scheme for dopamine, the tobacco use disorder improves, as along the improvement of comorbid disorders, like the risky use of alcohol, gambling, dystimia, insonnia.
I think it happens by syntonizing the dopamine metabolism. Moreover, auriculotherapy doesn't cause the same adverse effects of L-DOPA treatment. These observational data, that are not published, warrant further research.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Biological Science
- Bioecology
- Systems Ecology
- Landscape Ecology
- Connectivity