We love studies featuring rodents here on the blog. But mix in illicit drugs and candy and, boy, do you have our attention.
So we present here a study from the Journal of Proteome Research, showing that a licorice ingredient called isoliquiritigenin (ISL) can block the nervous system's production of dopamine, which is triggered with cocaine use. Read the study here.
Scientists from South Korea and Pennsylvania used rats as model animals to show that rats injected with ISL just prior to cocaine-administration showed 50 percent less of the behavioral effects associated with the illicit drug. They also showed that ISL injections protected nerve cells in the brain from cocaine-associated damage.
We know this wasn't the way the study was conducted, but we like the mental picture of a debauch of rats snorting cocaine, then pigging out on licorice to end the high.
