BRAIN STUDY OPENS A DOOR ON TREATMENT FOR ADDICTION

WASHINGTON - Whether you smoke a cigarette or use cocaine, certain nerve
endings in the brain are tweaked in the same way, which suggests there may
be a universal way to treat addiction, US researchers said yesterday.

Alcohol, cocaine, amphetamines, morphine, and nicotine all make brain cells
hypersensitive, a team at Stanford University in California reported.

''What we have identified is a single change caused by drugs of abuse with
different molecular mechanisms,'' said Dr. Robert Malenka of Stanford
University Medical Center, who led the study.

The affected brain cells are in a region of the brain called the ventral
tegmental area, or VTA, Malenka's team reported in the Feb. 20 issue of the
journal Neuron.

Last year, Malenka and his colleagues gave cocaine to mice and found that
glutamate, a chemical in the body, was stimulating neurons in the VTA to
release dopamine, a key neurotransmitter or message-carrying chemical
associated with movement. The brain cells stayed super-sensitive to
glutamate for as long as a week, they found.

In yesterday's study, they found the same is true for cocaine, morphine,
amphetamines, nicotine, and alcohol. Stress caused similar changes, but
other, nonaddictive drugs that act on the brain did not.

This could help explain why stress can cause a relapse in addicts. ''When
drug addicts who are in remission and are doing fine are subject to stress,
they very often relapse,'' Malenka said.

The work could eventually lead to a universal drug to battle addiction,
Malenka said.

''It's just the beginning of the story, but given that it is happening in
the VTA it is likely to lead someplace,'' he said.