科学美国人60秒:进食尼古丁细菌有助于戒烟-托福听力下载

　　科学美国人60秒中文翻译：

　　Quitting smoking is tough， 戒烟真的是一件难事，

　　so tough that only about 5 percent of smokers who try to quit in a given year actually succeed. 难到实际上每年仅有5%的戒烟者能够成功。

　　Medications can double those odds—which still leaves a high failure rate. 而药物治疗能够让这个数字翻一番—但是失败率依然很高。

　　And a promising vaccine, meant to arouse an immune response to nicotine, could not beat a placebo in clinical trials. 而现在一种激发人体对尼古丁免疫力的疫苗有望成功，但却在临床试验中未能战胜安慰剂。

　　But researchers haven't given up on a vaccine yet. 但是研究人员对疫苗的研究仍未放弃。

　　Instead of revving up the immune system, though, they've come up with a new idea: 研发人员没有进行刺激免疫系统的方法，而是提出了新理念：

　　why not use an enzyme to break down nicotine—before it gives you a buzz? 在你沉醉于尼古丁之前，为什么不先下手为强，利用酶来将其分解呢?

　　For almost 50 years there's been reports of bacteria that can actually use nicotine to thrive on. 这50年来有关细菌依靠尼古丁而生的报道一直持续不断。

　　Kim Janda, a chemist and immunologist at The Scripps Research Institute. 斯克里普斯研究所的一位化学免疫学家吉姆·简达说道。

　　The bacteria uses nicotine as its sole source of carbon and nitrogen. 这种细菌会将尼古丁视为唯一的碳及氮的来源。

　　It does the trick with a nicotine-chomping enzyme. 它的一种酶能消化尼古丁。

　　So Janda and his colleagues added the enzyme to mouse serum, doped with a cigarette's worth of nicotine. 因此简达和他的同事们利用老鼠进行试验，在它们的血清里注射了这种酶，同时还有约一支烟含量的尼古丁。

　　The enzyme was stable at human body temperature, 该种酶在人体体温条件下很稳定，

　　and was able to cut the half-life of nicotine from a couple hours to less than 15 minutes 而且能够将尼古丁的寿命从几小时缩减至15分钟内

　　that is, it greatly accelerated nicotine's disappearance. 这就证明尼古丁的分解速率被大大地加快。

　　The study is in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. 这项究已经在《美国化学会》杂志上发表。

　　But Janda says the enzyme isn't ready for prime time yet. 但是简达表示目前这种酶投入使用的时机还未成熟。

　　It's bacterial—so you're going to get an immune response, immune surveillance from it. 这种酶是细菌性的—因此首当其冲是获得这种细菌免疫，从中获得免疫监控。

　　And right now, the other important half-life, that of the enzyme in serum, is only 3 days. 而且现在最为关键的问题是这种酶在血清中只能活3天时间。

　　So it won't stick around long enough to be an effective vaccine. 因此它不会坚持很长时间产生出有效的疫苗。

　　A month would be great, a week or two would also be reasonable. 要是一个月就好了，但是一、两周时间也能接受。

　　While the researchers work out the kinks, smokers will have to rely on the tried-and-true methods of quitting: 在研究人员还在努力解决这一难题时，吸烟者们只能依靠一种现阶段靠谱的方法：

　　counseling, medication or good old cold turkey. 那就是就医，进行药物治疗或干脆掐断不吸。

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