Dopamine-beta hydroxylase polymorphism and cocaine addiction.docVIP

Behavioral and Brain Functions BioMedCentral Short paper Open Access Dopamine-beta hydroxylase polymorphism and cocaine addiction Camila Guindalini1,2,3,4, Ronaldo Laranjeira5, David Collier1,6, Guilherme Messas4, Homero Vallada4,6 and Gerome Breen*1,6 Address: 1MRC Social Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Research Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London, UK, 2Laboratório Integrado de Neurociências Clínicas, Department of Psychiatry, Federal University of S?o Paulo, Brazil, 3Department of Psychobiology, Federal University of S?o Paulo, Brazil, 4Department of Psychiatry, University of S?o Paulo, Medical School, Brazil, 5UNIAD (Unit of Drug and Alcohol Research), Department of Psychiatry, Federal University of S?o Paulo, Brazil and 6Division of Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London, UK Email: Camila Guindalini - camilascg@; Ronaldo Laranjeira - laranjeira@psiquiatria.epm.br; David Collier - d.collier@iop.kcl.ac.uk; Guilherme Messas - messas@.br; Homero Vallada - hvallada@usp.br; Gerome Breen* - g.breen@iop.kcl.ac.uk * Corresponding author Published: 3 January 2008 Received: 25 September 2007 Accepted: 3 January 2008 Behavioral and Brain Functions 2008, 4:1 doi:10.1186/1744-9081-4-1 This article is available from: /content/4/1/1 ? 2008 Guindalini et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Cocaine addiction involves a number of medical, psychological and social problems. Understanding the genetic aetiology of this disorder will be essential for design of effective treatments. Dopamine- beta hydroxylase (DbH) catalyzes the conversion of dopamine to norepinephrine and could, therefore, have an influence on both cocaine action and the basal sensitiv