Cocaine overdose treatment found in soil of coca plants
Labspaces.net reports scientists have discovered a substance that breaks down cocaine 100 times faster than the human body, potentially helping the 500,000 people admitted to hospital emergency rooms each year for overdose of the highly addictive, potentially deadly stimulant.
Right now, there’s nothing doctors can give you to counteract the cocaine you’ve overdosed on. They can only treat overdose’s symptoms like racing pulse, seizure, convulsions and death. So Remy L. Brim and colleagues at the University of Michigan, in collaboration with Columbia University and the University of Kentucky, dug around in the soil around coca plants, and found a specially adapted bacterium that makes a cocaine-fighting enzyme called cocaine esterase (CocE). CocE blocks cocaine toxicity by eliminating cocaine. It works in rats, and human trials could happen next.
Brim presented this research today at the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics annual meeting in Anaheim, CA.
