A new weapon against heroin addiction.
The vaccine against heroin addiction for the first time underwent preclinical trials on primates. The developers of the vaccine – the laboratory of Professor Yanda have been working on their vaccine for more than eight years.
The vaccine stimulates the production of antibodies by the immune system, which reveals and neutralize the molecules of the drug, as well as the usual vaccine acts on the infection. So, narcotic euphoria does not appear, due to the action of heroin is completely blocked. According to the developers of the vaccine – the lack of euphoria will prevent the relapse of drug addicts on rehabilitation.
Scientists are confident of this version of the vaccine will be able to pass trials in humans, since all substances in the vaccine have already been approved by the FDA or have proved their safety in other clinical trials.
It is important to note that this vaccine is relevant only for heroin addicts – it is not suitable for other types of opioids. This excludes the possibility of successfully eliminating addiction for those who use substitutes during therapy. The authors of the study note that this vaccine is only an addition to therapy, not an independent course of treatment.
Therapy for the treatment of heroin addiction differs in Russia and other countries. While the United Nations and WHO officially support substitution therapy, whose programs are used in more than one hundred countries – in Russia, non-opioid drugs are used to remove the withdrawal syndrome, the effectiveness of which is much lower than that of methadone. Accordingly, it is too early to talk about the use of this vaccine in Russia.
