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General News    H4'ed 9/21/10

The Rise and Fall of Provigil - Part II

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Message Evelyn Pringle

A little over a year after the Volkow study reported that Provigil (modafinil), affects the same brain chemicals as stimulants and may be addictive, on July 20, 2010, in the Atlanta Science News Examiner, Kevin Murnane reported that research showed modafinil "produces some effects that are similar to abused stimulants, such as cocaine."

In what may turn out to be the final nail in the modafinil coffin, rhesus monkeys were given modafinil prior to undergoing behavioral, neurochemical, and brain imaging studies for a study led by Monica Andersen, conducted at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University, in the June 2010, "Psychopharmacology" journal.

"Similar to other stimulants, these researchers found that modafinil increased movement or locomotion in their subjects," Murnane wrote. "Furthermore, an acute bolus of modafinil elicited a return or reinstatement of cocaine self-administration that had been previously diminished through extinction training."

"These behavioral effects are very consistent with those of other stimulant-type drugs," he reported.

Mechanistically, the researchers found "using Positron Emission Tomography (PET) imaging that modafinil bound to and occupied a protein in the brain called the dopamine transporter," he explained. "This protein is the same one that cocaine binds to."

"Furthermore, they found that modafinil increased dopamine neurotransmission," Murnane said. "This is the same mechanism thought to mediate the euphoric and addictive properties of cocaine."

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Evelyn Pringle is an investigative journalist and researcher focused on exposing corruption in government and corporate America.
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