Scientists have made some progress in their effort to develop a vaccine for cocaine addiction. The vaccine is actually a series of injections that trigger an immune response to cocaine. The newly-created antibodies prevent the drug from entering the brain and thus blunt its euphoric effects.

To assess the safety and efficacy of their coke vaccine, Thomas Kosten and colleagues at Baylor randomized 115 cocaine addicts to receive either 5 shots of the vaccine over a 12 week period or a series of similarly timed placebo injections.

They monitored cocaine intake using urinalyses.

Most subjects smoked crack cocaine. Many also used marijuana (18%), alcohol (10%), and narcotics (44%).
 
Among subjects who received all 5 shots, 38% achieved sufficient antibody levels to blunt the effects of the drug. Antibodies remained in the bloodstream for 8-10 weeks after the final stick.

In this subset, 53% of the subjects stopped using cocaine—significantly more than the 23% of subjects who did not produce enough antibodies.

The vaccine was well tolerated, with no treatment-related serious adverse events or deaths.

But the partial success was associated with some risk. Some subjects began snorting massive amounts of the drug in an effort to overcome the vaccine’s effects. Some amassed 10 times the amount in their systems than had been encountered before the trial began.

“After the vaccine, doing cocaine was a very disappointing experience for them,” Kosten told the Washington Post.  “Previous research has shown that a reduction in use is associated with a significant improvement in cocaine abusers’ social functioning and thus is therapeutically meaningful.”

Kosten plans to begin a larger vaccine trial this spring.

About 2.1 million Americans have used cocaine in the last month, studies show. 

The write-up appears in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

A study of children between the ages of 11 and 17 has revealed that suicide risk increases with the number of changes in residence.

To reach this conclusion, Ping Qin and colleagues from the University of Aarhus used data from Danish population registries to identify 120,000 children born in Denmark between 1978 and 1995.

Using other sources, they subsequently determined  that 4,160 of these people attempted suicide during adolescence. Seventy-nine completed the act.

The scientists then used logistic regression to demonstrate the increased risk of attempted and completed suicide associated with changes in home address. The more frequently the kids moved, the higher was the suicide risk.

Subjects that moved more than 3 times had twice the risk of suicidal behavior as those that stayed put throughout their early years. Those who moved more than 10 times experienced a four-fold bump in such risk.

The finding was not affected by year of birth, birth order, birthplace, age when the move took place, gender, presence of 2 parents, or parental age at birth.

“It’s understandable that a lot of moves increase people’s risk for suicide,” Nadine Kaslow, the chief psychologist at Emory University told ABC news. “Moving is all about losing things.”

But Kaslow cautioned that moving might be a marker for problems rather than the proximate cause of suicidal behavior. “There could be all sorts of other family stressors that are associated with moves,” she reasoned.

The write-up appears in Archives of General Psychiatry.

“It is always good to involve children in the process, motivating their participation in all decisions, plans and practical work,” wrote the authors.

Kaslow recommended having the children visit their new home and, after the move, their old one. But she added the vast majority of children do adjust. “Some kids are at increased risk, but many…do just fine,” she told ABC News.