Opiates have provided relief from psychic and physical pain for millennia, but their abuse and control has created an international scourge of addiction, misery, crime, and disease. Furthermore, because opiates are frequently administered intravenously, abusers may suffer from and transmit infections, including HIV, hepatitis B, and hepatitis C. Methadone maintenance remains the most successful...

and dependence, at least in in vivo systems. The recent cloning of these receptors has enabled more penetrating Laboratory of Molecular Psychiatry Yale University School of Medicine analyses (Mansour et al., 1995), which could yet reveal alterations related to opiate addiction. For example, ex-New Haven, Connecticut 06508 posure to agonist in vitro elicits receptor desensitization and down-regu...

BACKGROUND Many drug users present to primary care requesting detoxification from illicit opiates. There are a number of detoxification agents but no recommended drug of choice. The purpose of this study is to compare buprenorphine with dihydrocodeine for detoxification from illicit opiates in primary care. METHODS Open label randomised controlled trial in NHS Primary Care (General Practices)...

The blood-brain barrier (BBB) is an intricate cellular system composed of vascular endothelial cells and perivascular astrocytes that restrict the passage of immunocompetent cells into the central nervous system (CNS). Expression of the adhesion molecules, intercellular adhesion molecule 1 (ICAM-1) and vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (VCAM-1) on brain microvascular endothelial cells (BMVEC) a...

AIM To assess the relationship between testing positive for opiates and/or cocaine and prior offending. METHODS 139,925 persons (107,573 men) identified from a saliva test for opiate and cocaine metabolites following arrest in England and Wales, 1 April 2005-31 March 2009, were case-linked with 2-year recorded offending history. The prior offending rate, accounting for estimated incarceration...

Maickel, G. K. W. Yim, Life Sci. 26, 2113 (1980)] and failed to observe their reported decrease ofTP eating after naloxone. We have also used greater numbers of TP trials with the same negative results [N. L. Ostrowski, N. Rowland, T. L. Foley, J. L. Nelson, L. D. Reid, PharmacQl. Biochem. Behav. 14, 549 (1981)]. In each case we measured the amount consumed, amount spilled, and duration of food...

It has been standard teaching for many years that opiates should not in any circumstances be given to dyspnoeic patients with chronic bronchitis, but the evidence on which this view is based is derived almost solely from clinical impressions. Although morphine and its derivatives have been shown to diminish the ventilatory response to carbon dioxide in normal human volunteers (Loeschcke, Sweel,...

The discovery of the opiate receptors in the central nervous system of man and subsequent identification of endogenous opiate-like ligands (enkephalins and endorphins) has provided a model for the analgesia, euphoria and addiction produced by the narcotics. In this article, the author reviews the background, biosynthesis and degradation, distribution, nociceptive transmission and analgesic effe...

BARRING a revolutionary breakthrough in pain management, opiates will remain the mainstay of analgesia for the foreseeable future. For years, researchers chasing the Holy Grail of opiate pharmacology have sought to dissociate their desirable analgesic properties from their undesirable ones. In addition to their well-known respiratory depressant effects and potential for addiction, opiates also ...