Mutant mice and other scientific oddities

This looks good for the future (too bad I have to stop now)

Genetically altered mice that are unusually sensitive to nicotine may help scientists nail down exactly how people become addicted to smoking, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

Specific doorways into brain cells, called receptors, in the newly created mice could hold the key to nicotine addiction, they said.

Studying the mice may help in the development of better drugs to help people quit smoking, the researchers wrote in Friday's issue of the journal Science...

If a way can be found to stop nicotine from latching on to brain cells, tobacco addiction might be curable.

"It's a complicated pathway that still must be broken down into individual steps before we can understand it fully, but I personally believe that nicotine addiction will be among the first addictions to be solved, because we already have so many tools to study it," he said.

Study shows anti-depressant plus patch may help smokers quit (though it didn't work for three-quarters of them). This is similar to the combo I'm going to be using -- they just used a different kind of antidepressant in this study. The percentage of people using the drug who stayed quit after six months was 23%, as compared to 10% for the placebo group who used the patch alone.

New drug helps people stop smoking, lose weight, and improve their cholesterol. On the other hand, it doubles the chances of depression. There's always something.