USING cocaine just once could damage brain cells for up to two weeks, research has warned.
Britain is now believed to snort around 117 tonnes of cocaine per year, according to the UK’s National Crime Agency amid a huge explosion in use.
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Britain is now believed to snort around 117 tonnes of cocaine per year Credit: Getty
Credit: THE SUN
The UK also has the second highest rate of cocaine use in the world, with one in 40 adults — 2.7 per cent of the population — using the party drug, more than any other country in Europe, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says.
But according to new tests on mice who were exposed to the drug only once, cells in the middle of their brain called dopaminergic neurons were “extensively altered” in some for up to 14 days.
This part of the brain is known to play an important role in reward and motivation.
The German and US researchers also suggested that a single exposure to cocaine “rewired” the genetic material of ” important brain cells”.
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Experts today said the findings challenged the idea that occasionally using the drug recreationally could be harmless and that one use alone may raise the risk of addiction.
Professor Ana Pombo, an expert in genome biology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, US and study co-author said: “Our results suggest that a single exposure to cocaine ‘rewires’ the genome of these important brain cells.
“The fact that we found such big changes that persist for two weeks is unexpected and it suggests that the drug is leaving a longer-term ‘scar’ in the genome of the brain cells.”
“These persistent changes may be setting the stage for a stronger response after a second dose of cocaine, which could help explain why the brain becomes susceptible to cocaine addiction.
“We still need to investigate how long these changes last for. Are they permanent, or can the brain cells recover over time?
“We also need to investigate how these changes translate to the risk of addiction.”
In the study, the researchers used a technique called genome architecture which pinpoints how genetic material is organised inside a cell.
Compared to mice not exposed to cocaine, researchers found that the structure of dopaminergic neurons were “extensively altered” in an area in the middle of the brain.
The changes were greatest 24 hours after exposure, but were still visible in some mice up to two weeks later, the researchers said.
They also found that exposed cells produced more signalling molecules, called neuropeptides, that have been linked to addiction in humans.
Other genes that help the brain cell function normally had become less active.
The findings will be presented in full today at the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies Forum 2026, in Barcelona.
Cocaine is a highly addictive drug that has been linked to anxiety and paranoia in users, and can lead to heart damage, impotence and poor mental health in the long term.
Professor Christina Dalla, an expert in pharmacology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and FENS Forum communication committee chair, who was not involved in the research, said: “Cocaine use is a serious and growing problem around the world.
“We need to understand the effects of this drug and how people become addicted, but it’s almost impossible to study these mechanisms in detail in the human brain, so instead we look at mice.
“These findings challenge the idea that occasional recreational use of cocaine may be harmless as they suggest that one use could change our brains and raise the risk of addiction in the future.
“Researching these changes in greater detail could help us understand why some people are more likely than others to become addicted.
“This could also help us to find new ways to treat addiction.”
