NIDA to Focus on Drug Abuse in Children

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) recently launched new research initiatives focusing on drug use in children and adolescents and medications to treat cocaine, methamphetamine, and nicotine addiction.

Timothy Condon, Ph.D., a neuroscientist and associate director of NIDA, told Psychiatric News that an additional research initiative on the genetics of addiction will be announced later this year.

"We will be looking at all research on the genetics of vulnerability, especially molecular targets and large family and sibling pair studies," he said.

With rapid advances in genetic mapping technology, the possibility of identifying genes that place an individual at increased risk for substance abuse has become more feasible, according to a NIDA statement.

"Regarding phenotypes, we want to know the genetic contribution to such factors as heavy usage, age of first use, or clinical addiction," added Condon.

NIDA is promoting its children and adolescent initiative, which was announced late last year through program announcements, and is making more research grants available, according to Condon. NIDA received an increase in the current fiscal year's budget for the initiative, noted Condon.

"The impetus for the research initiative is the awareness that drug use in children is starting at a younger age and increasing among youth of all ages, which means we need to focus more on prevention," said Condon.

NIDA's research portfolio will focus on the following areas:

• Cognitive research into the decision-making process of young people related to taking drugs including the impact of peer pressure and the environment.



• Treatment interventions for children who have been exposed prenatally to crack and have been shown to have subtle cognitive impairments related to executive function.



• Brain research that can show the effects of drug use on youth at different ages.



• The role of risk and protective factors in increasing or decreasing the probability of children becoming addicted.

Condon mentioned that developing an anticocaine agent is a priority of the medication development initiative. "We are now starting the Phase 3 multisite clinical trials and have 30 compounds for treating cocaine addiction in the pipeline."

He noted that the third phase involves drug testing on a general clinical population rather than patients in a controlled setting.

The preliminary data suggest that "the efficacy of medications appears to be boosted by behavioral therapy. We have noticed that the nicotine patch and methadone treatment also work best with counseling," Condon observed.

Researchers will also evaluate whether a developed anticocaine agent would apply to treating methamphetamine addiction, which is a growing problem, Condon said. "Though cocaine and methamphetamine are slightly different compounds, they are both stimulants," he said. Cocaine and methamphetamine both interact with the dopamine transporter-cocaine by blocking dopamine entry into the cell, and methamphetamine by gaining entry into the cell, according to a NIDA statement.

More clinical research is also needed in the area of nicotine addiction, Condon said. "To increase the effectiveness of long-term treatments, we are looking at the development of nicotine and non-nicotine-based replacement medications combined with behavioral strategies."