Historical review: Molecular and cellular mechanisms of opiate and cocaine addiction.

Opiate addiction and cocaine addiction: underlying molecular neurobiology and genetics.

Addictive diseases, including addiction to heroin, prescription opioids, or cocaine, pose massive personal and public health costs. Addictions are chronic relapsing diseases of the brain caused by drug-induced direct effects and persisting neuroadaptations at the epigenetic, mRNA, neuropeptide, neurotransmitter, or protein levels. These neuroadaptations, which can be specific to drug type, and ...

Pharmacogenetics and human molecular genetics of opiate and cocaine addictions and their treatments.

Opiate and cocaine addictions are major social and medical problems that impose a significant burden on society. Despite the size and scope of these problems, there are few effective treatments for these addictions. Methadone maintenance is an effective and most widely used treatment for opiate addiction, allowing normalization of many physiological abnormalities caused by chronic use of short-...

The hidden epidemic: opiate addiction and cocaine use in the South, 1860-1920.

Effects of drugs of abuse on hippocampal plasticity and hippocampus-dependent learning and memory: contributions to development and maintenance of addiction.

It has long been hypothesized that conditioning mechanisms play major roles in addiction. Specifically, the associations between rewarding properties of drugs of abuse and the drug context can contribute to future use and facilitate the transition from initial drug use into drug dependency. On the other hand, the self-medication hypothesis of drug abuse suggests that negative consequences of dr...

Antibodies as pharmacokinetic and metabolic modifiers of neurotoxicity.

Abuse of psychoactive chemicals can result in neurotoxic effects that are difficult to treat medically. Successful therapy is often hindered by the lack of useful antagonists for many of these chemicals and by the extensive distribution of these chemicals out of the bloodstream. Although there are treatments for opiate addiction and an antagonist for opiate overdose, there are no such medical t...