Can Magnets Treat Cocaine Addiction?
A few years ago Dr. Diana Martinez and Dr. Marco Diana decided to investigate a new technology that uses magnetic pulses to stimulate brain cells. Both had been trying to develop medications to treat cocaine addiction, and both had come to feel that the pace of progress—their own and others’—was unequal to the urgency of the need. In the new technology, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), they saw a potential treatment that might be developed relatively rapidly for clinical use.
Dr. Martinez, a Neuroimaging specialist at Columbia University Health Center in New York City, planned a preclinical study. She was using a relatively new type of TMS coil (magnetic pulse generator), and her first objective was to identify machine settings with potential clinical efficacy.
Participants in her study were cocaine users who did not want to stop. They came into the hospital research unit, and attended a self-administration session in which they repeatedly chose between smoking a dose of the drug and receiving a sum of money. They then underwent TMS for 3 weeks, after which they repeated the self-administration session. If they chose cocaine less often after treatment than they had before, the setting that was used would be a good candidate for further testing.
Dr. Diana, a research pharmacologist at the University of Sassari, Italy, designed a pilot clinical trial. Sixty people who were trying to quit cocaine would receive TMS, real or sham, every other day for a month. Dr. Diana would assess their cocaine use though interviews and hair analysis before they started TMS, at the end of the treatment month, and every 3 months thereafter for a year. He hoped that the patients who received real TMS would reduce their cocaine use.
Both researchers’ projects hit snags early on. In this installment, we follow Dr. Martinez as she resolves an initial impasse and advances her project to a new stage. Meanwhile, circumstances close in on Dr. Diana. He is forced to cut short his trial, but comes away with encouraging data and increased enthusiasm for TMS.
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