Researchers Make Strides in Cocaine Addiction Research

April 6, 2008

Researchers from Wake Forest University School of Medicine have reported new findings about cocaine addiction, at Experimental Biology 2008, the meeting this week of the American Society of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, in San Diego, Calif.

The findings include:
- How stress relates to drug use in monkeys, and could offer clues to the social context of drug use in humans. (Full release)
- The possibility that adding enrichment to a drug user's environment could reduce drug use. (Full release)
- A possible new treatment strategy: developing a replacement drug to treat cocaine addiction similar to the way tobacco and heroin addictions are treated. (Full release)

Contacts: Karen Richardson, krchrdsn@wfubmc.edu, (336) 716-4453, or Mark Wright, mwright@wfubmc.edu, (336) 716-3382.

Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center is an academic health system comprised of North Carolina Baptist Hospital, Brenner Children’s Hospital and Wake Forest University Health Sciences, which operates the university’s School of Medicine and Piedmont Triad Research Park. The system comprises 1,154 acute care, rehabilitation and long-term care beds and has been ranked as one of “America’s Best Hospitals” by U.S. News & World Report since 1993. Wake Forest Baptist is ranked 32nd in the nation by America’s Top Doctors for the number of its doctors considered best by their peers. The institution ranks in the top third in funding by the National Institutes of Health and 4th in the Southeastern United States in revenues from its licensed intellectual property.

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