Nicotine Prime Gene Expression by Cocaine Molecular Mechanism for a Gateway Drug : Epigenetic Changes Initiated

smoking increases the risk of becoming dependent on the drug: another healthy reason not to smoke. might actually exacerbate the patient's cocaine addiction, a highly undesirable side effect. Finally, using cocaine while therapy to help curb their smoking habits; if the authors' findings hold up in humans, nicotine replacement therapy mechanism operative in mice is mimicked in humans. Cocaine abusers are often administered nicotine replacement results: Most cocaine addicts began using the drug after they started smoking cigarettes, as would be expected if the . reinforces the urgency of translating these et al An epidemiological analysis described in the paper by Levine selective efficacy and low toxicity, although the tools for targeting these agents are not yet available. cocaine. Confining the action of these putative drugs to the striatum would enhance their chances of achieving histone acetylation, might counteract the effect of nicotine and perhaps other stimuli that prime the response to cocaine. Encouraging, but preliminary at this point, is the idea that activators of histone deacetylases, which decrease hyperacetylated, a state that results in augmented gene expression, consistent with the exaggerated response to in the reward centers of the brain (the striatum), the authors found that certain histones were −− chromatin which package DNA as −− nicotine engineer this cocaine supersensitivity? By taking a close look at histone proteins not been pretreated. In contrast, cocaine did not have the reciprocal effect on nicotine responses. So, how does behavioral and neuronal activity responses that mice typically exhibit when given cocaine, relative to animals that had The authors pretreated mice with nicotine to mimic the effects of smoking and detected an increase in the interfering with this reprogramming may rein in cocaine abuse. now show that nicotine alters the brain to make it more susceptible to cocaine's addicting effects, and suggest that . et al treatments that curtail drug use, but new research has delivered some potentially practical knowledge. Levine brain, setting up positive incentive cycles that lead to addiction. These mechanistic insights have not yet yielded enforcement or medicine, are weak and largely ineffectual. Most drugs of abuse act on the reward centers of the Illicit drugs sap the strength of the human population. Yet, our efforts to control their use, through law Another Reason to Shun Cigarettes