Single injection 'targets alcohol cravings'

A single injection could help alcoholics to resist the temptation to drink, new research has found.

Chilean researchers discovered that rats treated with gene therapy via an injection were less likely to crave alcohol than those without.

The drug disulfiram, also known as Antabuse, is sometimes used to help alcoholics give up drinking.

"But you have to take it every day, so there is a big problem with compliance," researcher Amalia Sapag at the University of Chile in Santiago told the New Scientist.

The magazine reports that the rats were bred to crave alcohol and were then injected with viruses engineered to disrupt the gene for an enzyme involved in alcohol metabolism.

Mutations in the gene aldehyde dehydrogenase reduce the risk of succumbing to alcohol by two-thirds or more.

After being injected with the therapy targeting aldehyde dehydrogenase, the rats drank 50 per cent less alcohol for more than a month.

The injection also reduced the enzyme's activity in rats' livers by 80 per cent, Dr Sapag revealed at the American Society of Gene Therapy meeting in Seattle earlier this month.

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