By MARILYNN MARCHIONE - AP Medical Writer

MADISON, Wis.(AP) Doctors are testing a radical new way to help smokers quit: a shot that "immunizes" them against the nicotine rush that fuels their addiction.

That pleasurable buzz has seduced Mario Musachia into burning through nearly half a million cigarettes in half a century.

Now the Madison man is among 300 people around the country who are testing an experimental vaccine that makes the immune system attack nicotine in much the same way it would fight a life-threatening germ.

The treatment keeps nicotine from reaching the brain, making smoking less pleasurable and theoretically, easier to give up. The small amount that still manages to get in helps to ease withdrawal, the main reason most quitters relapse.

If it works _ and this has not yet been proved _ the vaccine could become part of a new generation of smoking cessation treatments. They attack dependency in the brain instead of just replacing the nicotine from cigarettes in a less harmful way, like the gum, lozenges, patches and nasal sprays sold today.

One such drug, Pfizer Inc.'s Chantix, is due on the market any day now. Another, Sanofi-Aventis SA's Acomplia, recently won approval in Europe as a weight-loss drug. If U.S. regulators follow suit, some doctors say they also will use it to help smokers quit, especially those concerned about gaining weight.

"The typical patient is a 30-year-old woman who says, 'If I gain 5 pounds, I'm going back,'" said Dr. J. Taylor Hays, a smoking cessation expert at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., who helped test Chantix and other treatments.

Other novel drugs are in development, but NicVax, by Nabi Biopharmaceuticals, a Boca Raton, Fla., biotech company with labs in Rockville, Md., is most advanced among the vaccines.

If it works without any horrible side effects, I'd do this. Any other takers? lol

Soon they will have the Anti Gaming Vacine.

Think they are already starting, they are firing People for playing Solitare at work!

Curious to see if it works, somehow I don't think a huge % of people who take it will actually quit.

Almost everyone I know (including myself when I did smoke) who smokes does it because it's either a social thing, something to do to kill time, or force of habit. I've also heard some do it to appease an oral fixation, like chewing on pen caps, or always needing gum. All meaning, not needing nicotine.

They better not! haha! I LOVE my games to much.... I need another computer, an older computer so that I can play my old games on! I miss them much =/

-RMS Carpathia-

I'll wait and see if if actually works. Haven't tried any of the smoking cessation stuff out there yet though. But good to know that they're there when I do decide that I want to quit.

Im going to ask my Doc about trying Wellbutrin again. I had pretty good luck with the last time but I was too stubborn to quit for good.

Personally, I always give new prescription meds at least a year of public use before I try them...

Same here. At least with the meds I am on now, I know the risks and side effects.