"PET or positron emission tomography scans of the brain activity in 10 healthy volunteers who took the drug showed it boosted the level of dopamine circulating in the part of the brain involved in pleasure, reward and addiction," Bloomberg wrote, in summarizing the study published in the "Journal of the American Medical Association."
The increase of dopamine seen with the medicine is "the signature for drugs that have the potential for producing addiction," Nora Volkow, the lead author and director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, told Bloomberg.
Physicians prescribing Provigil should "be alert to the possibility that it could produce addiction," she said. Consumers also should be aware the drug "may have more abuse potential than originally believed."
Volkow wanted to add questions about the Provigil to the Institute's annual survey of high school drug use, she told Bloomberg.
The study noted that Provigil was being used off-label by people who want to boost their mental ability. "Modafinil is increasingly being diverted for nonmedical use by healthy individuals with the expectation that it will improve cognitive performance," the authors wrote in the March 18, 2009 Journal.
"The growing use of modafinil in clinical medicine and as a cognitive enhancing agent and the uncertainties surrounding the mechanisms underlying its pharmacological effects highlight the need to better understand its mechanisms of action," they advised.
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