Repeated administration of many addictive drugs leads to a progressive increase in their locomotor effects. This increase in locomotor activity often develops concomitantly with increases in their positive-reinforcing effects, which are believed to contribute to the etiology of substance use disorders. The purpose of this study was to examine changes in sensitivity to the locomotor effects of o...

BACKGROUND Amantadine is known to be a noncompetitive N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor antagonist and may be useful in preventing postoperative central sensitization, acute opioid tolerance, and opioid-induced hyperalgesia, thereby decreasing pain and analgesic requirements. The aim of this pilot study was to evaluate the effects of perioperative oral amantadine on postoperative pain and analgesic...

Magnesium is necessary for the presynaptic release of acetylcholine from nerve endings and may produce effects similar to calciumentry-blocking drugs [1]. With the discovery of the N-methylD-aspartate (NMDA) receptor and its links to nociceptive pain transmission and central sensitization, there has been renewed interest in utilizing noncompetitive NMDA receptor antagonists, as potential antihy...

Urokinase-type plasminogen activator (uPA) and tissue-type plasminogen activator (tPA) are extracellular proteases that play a role in synaptic plasticity and remodeling. Psychostimulants induce both tPA and uPA in acute and chronic drug delivery, but cocaine induces preferentially uPA, whereas morphine and amphetamine induce preferentially tPA. Specific doxycline-regulatable lentiviruses expre...

The aim of the present study was to compare the response to acute application of several drugs in adult male and female rats prenatally exposed to methamphetamine (MA). Spontaneous locomotor activity and exploratory behavior of adult male and female rats prenatally exposed to MA (5 mg/kg) or saline were tested in a Laboras apparatus (Metris B.V., Netherlands) for 1 h. Challenge dose of the exam...

Tolerance is an important component of opiate addiction, but the molecular basis for this phenomenon remains obscure. Here, we report that mice lacking neurotrophin-4 (NT4) display substantially reduced tolerance to morphine compared to wild-type. However, there were no deficits in sensitization and withdrawal, other behaviors relevant to drug addiction. Since NT4 knockout mice also show abnorm...

in a randomized, double blind study , we compared post operative pain and analgesic requirement in patients undergoing cesarean section with two types of general anesthesia: standardized general anesthesia (control group=26 cases) and preemptive low-dose ketamine (0.2 mg/kg) administered prior to anesthesia induction (keratmine group=27 cases). postoperative analgesia was provided for both grou...

The reliability of preemptive analgesia is controversial. Its effectiveness may vary among anatomical areas or surgical types. We evaluated preemptive analgesia by epidural morphine in six surgery types in a randomized, double-blind manner. Pain intensity was rated using a visual analog scale, a verbal report, and a measurement of postsurgical morphine consumption. Preemptive analgesia was effe...