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A form of gene therapy, that is being trialled in patients with Parkinson’s disease, might provide a potential one-off treatment for severe alcohol addiction. A study of rhesus macaque monkeys that were predisposed to heavy drinking found that by implanting a gene into their brains, which effectively resets the brain’s dopamine reward pathway, their desire to consume alcohol was dramatically reduced. Professor Kathleen Grant from Oregon Health and Science University’s National Primate Research Centre co-led the research. She told Newsday: “These monkeys were introduced to alcohol…rhesus monkeys, they’ll drink pretty heavily, on average about eight to ten drinks a day…if we took alcohol away from them, would they go back to drinking? We know that they do so we divided the group into two and one group got this gene therapy enhancement and…we saw that it would block the relapse drinking.” (Picture: Shows a rhesus macaques monkey drinking from a can in Kathmandu, Nepal. Credit: Getty Images.)