The global drug problem is getting worse.
Now in the United States, a vaccine is being developed that could potentially neutralize the drug's effects.
The real scary thing about drugs is that all the side effects occur without the user knowing.
In the United States, for a year of 2021, a whopping 81,000 people have died from drug misuse without knowing it.
It is the drug vaccine technology that appeared in such a gruesome background.
Like a general vaccine, it creates antibodies to the drug component in the body of the inoculated person and neutralizes the effect of the drug.
At the end of October last year, researchers at the University of Houston, USA, unveiled the research process of the 'fentanyl vaccine' they are developing.
Drugs like fentanyl work by stimulating our brain.
When a drug is administered, very minute drug molecules remain in the blood, which travel through the blood vessels and pass through a very thin membrane between the blood vessels and the brain called the blood-brain barrier, stimulating the nervous system in the brain.
However, when you get the fentanyl vaccine being developed by Houston researchers, antibodies against fentanyl are created in your body.
When fentanyl is administered in this state, the antibody produced sticks to the fentanyl molecule.
If there were no antibodies, it would easily pass through the blood-brain barrier, but the enlarged fentanyl molecule cannot penetrate the barrier and the fentanyl molecule does not stimulate the brain.
It is a result of a study that after getting a vaccine, no matter how much fentanyl is given, it doesn't immediately make you feel better.
Houston University researchers ran a 'tail flick test', one of the representative drug effect experiments to verify the effectiveness of the vaccine.
First, the researchers divided the mice into two groups and vaccinated only one group with the fentanyl vaccine.
A full-fledged tail flick test was conducted after sufficient antibodies were produced in the body of the inoculated mice.
The researchers gave the mice small doses of fentanyl and then slowly applied heat to the tail area.
The mice that were not vaccinated had tail numbness due to the effects of the opioid analgesic fentanyl and flicked their tails an average of 50% slower than normal.
Increasing the dose of fentanyl slowed the response by up to 75%.
On the other hand, the vaccinated rats showed reaction rates that were all within the normal range.
In fact, fentanyl levels in the brains of vaccinated mice were significantly different from those of unvaccinated mice, suggesting that the vaccine effectively blocks fentanyl.
Houston University researchers expect this fentanyl vaccine to cause only minimal side effects.
The advent of a vaccine that can block the possibility of drug addiction in advance is very tempting news, but in fact, drug vaccines are developments that focus on treating people who are already addicted to drugs.
Then what about our country?
It's not as serious as the United States, but it's already a well-known fact that more and more people in Korea are having difficulty getting their hands on drugs and getting treatment.
Experts say that although research on drug addiction treatment is underway in Korea, it is still unfortunate in all aspects, including data infrastructure, due to the lack of social awareness that treats drug addicts as objects of treatment.
Today's conclusion, the superhero drug vaccine in the drug treatment world, unlike its name, was a guy with a strong character of treatment rather than prevention.
As the dangers of drugs are increasingly emphasized in Korean society, greater attention will be needed to treatment and recovery.