Mechanisms of Analgesic Action of Opioid Peptides

Management of opioid analgesic overdose.

Copyright © 2012 Massachusetts Medical Society. Opioid analgesic overdose is a preventable and potentially lethal condition that results from prescribing practices, inadequate understanding on the patient’s part of the risks of medication misuse, errors in drug administration, and pharmaceutical abuse.1,2 Three features are key to an understanding of opioid analgesic toxicity. First, opioid ana...

Non-opioid analgesic poisoning.

Since the first cases of severe and fatal liver damage were reported in 1966,1,2 overdose of paracetamol has become the cause of 100–200 deaths in the UK each year.3 Paracetamol toxicity remains the leading cause of fulminant hepatic failure in the UK and is a common reason for liver transplantation.4,5 Knowledge of the toxic mechanism (Fig 1) has led to effective antidotes which provide substr...

Opioid peptides.

The Different Mechanisms of Action Potential Propagation in the Heart

It was thought previously that cardiac muscle gap junctions provide low-resistance connections between cells and permit the local-circuit current to flow. Some evidences show that myocardial cells may not require low-resistance connections for successful propagation of the action potential (AP). It seems that some other types of mechanisms must be involved in AP propagation. In this article, we...

The Different Mechanisms of Action Potential Propagation in the Heart

It was thought previously that cardiac muscle gap junctions provide low-resistance connections between cells and permit the local-circuit current to flow. Some evidences show that myocardial cells may not require low-resistance connections for successful propagation of the action potential (AP). It seems that some other types of mechanisms must be involved in AP propagation. In this article, we...