Therapy for smoking kills the pleasure of nicotine
Can't kick cigarettes? A vaccine may one day help by preventing nicotine from reaching its target in the brain, according to research published this week. Most smoking therapies do a poor job of stopping the habit 70% to 80% of smokers who use an approved drug therapy to quit relapse. Scientists say this is because the targets of existing therapies are imperfect, only slightly weakening nicotine's ability to find its target in the brain. So some scientists have been trying a different approach creation of a vaccine. It would work like this: People would inject the vaccine like a shot, and the vaccine would create nicotine antibodies, molecules that can snatch up nicotine from the bloodstream before it reaches the brain. The vaccine could be used by smokers who want to quit or people who are worried about getting addicted to cigarettes in the future. Researchers have tried to create vaccines in the past, but the ones they've come up with have not been particularly effe...