Vaccine Could Be on the Market in Five Years

A vaccine to immunize people against smoking could be available within five years. Swiss scientists are understood to have carried out a successful trial of the new treatment on 300 heavy smokers. The volunteers have been receiving injections for six months to help them kick their habit.

It is hoped the new course of treatment may eventually be available on the NHS to help cut the annual 114,000 smoking-related deaths in the UK.

Deborah Arnott, director of Action on Smoking and Health today said the vaccine was an exciting development. "A vaccine is going to be a major step forward for treating not just nicotine addiction, but also diseases that come with it like cancers and lung and heart disease."

But she warned: "We still have to worry about stopping people from becoming addicted to smoking in the first place."

Switzerland-based Cytos Biotechnology was to announce the results of its trials at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's annual meeting Sunday. And two other firms, including Cambridge-based Xenova Research, are planning to launch similar studies soon.

The trial drugs, taken as a course of four to six injections, stimulate the production of antibodies in the blood. These stop nicotine entering the brain and making smokers crave a puff.

The body's immune system does not normally react to nicotine, but scientists have found a way to combine the protein with another chemical which the body will recognize and block.

And the vaccine might not only prove effective for smokers. Early tests on mice and human studies have found they significantly reduce the euphoric rush of cocaine as well as nicotine. And Cytos said the same concept could also prove effective in combating medical conditions such as Alzheimer's and asthma.

One in ten teenagers smoke regularly while the highest percentage is in the 20 to 24-year-old group, indicating the long-term health effects of smoking will hit the NHS hard in years to come. From April to December last year the NHS spent GBP 32.3 million trying to help smokers quit.

Scientists recently shed light on why smokers find it so hard to give up. A team at Goldsmiths College in London concluded that being deprived of nicotine makes the things that normally make people happy less enjoyable. The research said this may be why so many smokers relapse.

Two-hundred smokers were tested twice, each time after they had avoided smoking for 12 hours. All then received a lozenge, some of them containing nicotine. They were then asked how pleasurable they expected certain activities to be, like eating their favorite food, or a night out. The nicotine-deprived expected things to be less pleasurable than those who were given some.

© 2005 Evening News; Edinburgh (UK). All rights reserved.
© 2005 Daily News Central. All rights reserved.