{"id":175066,"date":"2023-10-27T01:22:22","date_gmt":"2023-10-27T06:22:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/10\/adapting-ritalin-to-tackle-cocaine-abuse"},"modified":"2023-10-27T01:22:22","modified_gmt":"2023-10-27T06:22:22","slug":"adapting-ritalin-to-tackle-cocaine-abuse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/10\/adapting-ritalin-to-tackle-cocaine-abuse","title":{"rendered":"Adapting Ritalin to tackle cocaine abuse"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/adapting-ritalin-to-tackle-cocaine-abuse.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Cocaine use continues to be a public health problem, yet despite concerted efforts, no drugs have been approved to resolve cocaine addiction. Research suggests that the attention-deficit\/hyperactivity disorder drug methylphenidate (MPH; Ritalin) could serve as a cocaine-replacement therapy, but clinical results have been mixed. Although several labs have produced MPH derivatives for testing, parts of the molecule remained chemically inaccessible. Now, researchers reporting in <i>ACS Central Science<\/i> have cleared that hurdle.<\/p>\n<p>According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 5 million Americans reported actively using cocaine in 2020, and almost 25,000 Americans died of a cocaine-related overdose in 2021. Although small-molecule drugs have proven effective in treating other drug addictions\u2014for example, methadone as a therapy for heroin abuse\u2014no such medication exists for cocaine abuse.<\/p>\n<p>MPH has been considered a potential treatment because it behaves similarly to the illicit drug, increasing dopamine levels in the brain by blocking dopamine reuptake. Additionally, <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/clinical+studies\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">clinical studies<\/a> have shown that MPH has a lower risk of abuse than cocaine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cocaine use continues to be a public health problem, yet despite concerted efforts, no drugs have been approved to resolve cocaine addiction. Research suggests that the attention-deficit\/hyperactivity disorder drug methylphenidate (MPH; Ritalin) could serve as a cocaine-replacement therapy, but clinical results have been mixed. Although several labs have produced MPH derivatives for testing, parts of [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":542,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,19,1495,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-175066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-chemistry","category-health","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/542"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175066\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}