BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Tolerance to the behavioural effects of morphine is blunted in β-arrestin-2 knockout mice, but opioid withdrawal is largely unaffected. The cellular mechanisms of tolerance have been studied in some neurons from β-arrestin-2 knockouts, but tolerance and withdrawal mechanisms have not been examined at the cellular level in periaqueductal grey (PAG) neurons, which are cruci...

BACKGROUND Opioids may alter immune function, thereby potentially affecting cancer recurrence. The authors investigated the association between postdiagnosis opioid use and breast cancer recurrence. METHODS Patients with incident, early stage breast cancer who were diagnosed during 1996 through 2008 in Denmark were identified from the Danish Breast Cancer Cooperative Group Registry. Opioid pr...

Methadone is widely being used for opioid substitution therapy. However, the administration of methadone to opioid dependent individual is frequently accompanied by withdrawal syndrome and chemical dependency develops. Other than that, it is also difficult to retain patients in the treatment programme making their retention rates are decreasing over time. This article is written to higlights th...

Opioid drugs produce their pharmacological effects by activating inhibitory guanine nucleotide-binding regulatory protein-linked mu, delta, and kappa opioid receptors. One major effector for these receptors is adenylyl cyclase, which is inhibited upon receptor activation. However, little is known about which of the ten known forms of adenylyl cyclase are involved in mediating opioid actions. He...

BACKGROUND Over the past 20 years there has been a steady rise in mortality associated with opioid misuse in several Western countries. We aimed to examine trends in opioid-related mortality over a 20-year period in the Republic of Ireland. METHODS Retrospective analysis of deaths attributed to ICD-9 codes 304.0 (morphine-type dependence) and E850.0 (accidental poisoning by opiates and relate...

BACKGROUND The clinical treatment of various types of pain relies upon the use of opioid analgesics. However most of them produce, in addition to the analgesic effect, several side effects such as the development of dependence and addiction as well as sedation, dysphoria, and constipation. One solution to these problems are chimeric compounds in which the opioid pharmacophore is hybridized with...

It has been appreciated for some time now that humans react differently to opioids. A specific opioid such as morphine sulfate may have specific analgesic effects for certain patients with postherpetic neuralgia whereas in other patients with postherpetic neuralgia, it may provide quite different analgesic qualities. Also, in any one individual patient a particular opioid may provide better ana...

27 * Department of Pharmacology, School of Pharmacy, Marmara University, T›bbiye Cad. No: 49 Haydarpafla, 81010 Istanbul, Turkey ° Corresponding author Opioid Control of Renal Excretion of Water and Sodium Summary : The kidneys act to regulate total body water and sodium via numerous neural and humoral mechanisms, including pathways that involve the renal sympathetic nerves, antidiuretic hormon...

Introduction: Association between single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in mu opioid receptor gene and drug addiction has been shown in various studies. Here, we have evaluated the existence of polymorphisms in exon 3 of this gene in Iranian population and investigated the possible association between these mutations and opioid addiction.  Methods: 79 opioid-dependent subjects (55 males, 24...