New Anti-cigarette Vaccine to Attack Nicotine in Human Body

Local Editor

According to the World Health Organization, tobacco consumption is the leading cause of preventable death across the globe by killing almost six million and causing more than half a trillion dollars of economic damage each year. Tobacco also killed nearly 100 million people in the last century and if current trends continue, it will kill about one billion more in the 21st century.

These shocking figures, along with health warnings, would push tobacco addicts for trying to quit smoking, though in most cases they cannot resist the cravings.

Luckily, some scientists recently announced that they have found an effective way to fight the nicotine craze.

In the context, a group of researchers from the Scripps Institute in California said they have managed to design a vaccine that could make the immune system destroy the molecules of nicotine, the addictive agent of tobacco, before they reach the brain.

The new vaccine is aimed at altering the nicotine molecules so that the antibodies of the immune system could target them, attach to them and delay their effects.

However, researchers noted that: "A major hurdle in the development of the strategy has been to elicit a sufficiently high antibody concentration to curb nicotine distribution to the brain."

Meanwhile, the newly designed vaccine, which has been tested on a group of mice, revealed that it delayed the effects of the addictive agent within the first 10 minutes after injection.

As a result, the research showed that the treated mice had lower concentrations of nicotine in their brain.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team