A study conduced by Baylor University and the Rockefeller University in New York wanted to test if Diulfiram (Antabuse), which is commonly used to treat alcoholism, would work in treating chronic cocaine abuse. They surmised that since cocaine addiction causes decreased dopamine levels, they wanted to test the effect of the drug on addicts who contained either ANKK1 genes or DRD2 dopamine receptors to see what effect the disulfiram would have. They chose these two because they have been shown to associated with alcohol and cocaine addiction, and psychiatric disorders.
As stated in the study the majority of the patients were white males, with an average age of 39 years old. They admitted to using cocaine on average of 13 years.
To conduct this, the researchers screened and eventually used 68 cocaine and opoid co-addicts who were stabilized using methadone for two weeks. They were then divided into two groups: one that would receive 250 mg of disulfiram/day, and another group which would receive a placebo. They were all then genotyped for any polymorphisms on those two genes. They were all tested for 12 weeks with urine tests to detect for cocaine.
It was found that the ones that had the ANKK1 genes only 52% were found to have cocaine positive urine samples in the 2 weeks after the tests, while the ones that were given the placebo had between 77 and 84 % cocaine positive samples. They concluded by saying that they found a link of pharmacotherapy and disulfiram treatment. They did say however, that the study could have been limited by the small sample size, and the fact that the patients were also co-dependent on opoids as well as cocaine.
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