A breakthrough vaccine could help millions of people addicted to heroin. Scientists in Mexico are preparing to test a vaccine that they hope will combat heroin addiction in drug users after seeing successful results in lab rats. The drug would make the body resistant to the effects of heroin. With the vaccine, heroin users could still shoot up or smoke the substance, but they would derive no pleasure from it, rendering the narcotic effectively useless.
Maria Elena Medina, director of Mexico’s National Institute of Psychiatry:
“It would be a vaccine for people who are serious addicts, who have not had success with other treatments and decide to use this application to get away from drugs.”
The Scripps Research Institute in California has also seen success of its heroin vaccine in lab rats and is currently conducting human clinical trials for cocaine and nicotine vaccines, but not heroin.
The Mexican scientists will be the first to test a heroin vaccine in humans and are sure the results will be promising.