BLOODY ANTIDOTE TO COKE

A CHEMICAL found in the blood of cocaine users could one day help
counter the drug's potentially lethal side effects.

In the US alone, millions of people use cocaine, and each year
150,000 end up in hospital emergency rooms with heart attacks or
other side effects caused by the drug.

These occur because cocaine interferes with proteins in the nervous
system that interact with neurotransmitters, chemicals that convey
signals from one neuron to another. Finding drugs to counter cocaine
poisoning is difficult - they tend to bind to the same target, and so
have the same effect.

But Yongli Chen, George Hess and a team at Cornell University in
Ithaca, New York, have discovered a promising alternative in a
surprising place-the bodies of users. They found that ecgonine methyl
ester (EME), a non-toxic breakdown product of cocaine, can reverse
the drug's effects. In test-tube experiments, synthetic EME
completely blocked the drug's effect on the nicotinic acetylcholine
receptor of nerve cells. But because it binds the receptor in a
different way from cocaine, forcing it open rather than shut, it
doesn't produce the same dangerous side effects.