A new study found that increasing the brain level of receptors for dopamine can reduce cocaine use by 75 percent in rats, Science Centric reported April 16. The authors of the study suggest that treatments that increase dopamine D2 receptors may prove useful in treating addiction.

Lead author Panayotis (Peter) Thanos, a neuroscientist with Brookhaven Lab and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Laboratory of Neuroimaging, believes these findings may lead to a new therapeutic direction. "By increasing dopamine D2 receptor levels, we saw a dramatic drop in these rats' interest in cocaine. This provides new evidence that low levels of dopamine D2 receptors may play an important role in not just alcoholism but in cocaine abuse as well."

The current findings may indicate that boosting the D2 levels of cocaine users could lessen their need for the drug, a result that his lab previously demonstrated in alcohol use in rats infused with dopamine D2 receptors.

"This adds another piece to the puzzle of the complex role of dopamine D2 receptors in addiction," said Thanos.

The study, conducted by Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, will appear in the July 2008 issue of Synapse.