The health burden of stress-related diseases, including depression and anxiety disorders, is rapidly increasing, whereas the range of available pharmacotherapies to treat these disorders is limited and suboptimal with regard to efficacy and tolerability. Recent findings support a major role for neuropeptides in mediating the response to stress and thereby identify neuropeptide systems as potent...

Mu opioid receptors are critical for heroin dependence, and A118G SNP of the mu opioid receptor gene (OPRM1) has been linked with heroin abuse. In our population of European Caucasians (n = 118), approximately 90% of 118G allelic carriers were heroin users. Postmortem brain analyses showed the OPRM1 genotype associated with transcription, translation, and processing of the human striatal opioid...

This paper aimed at reviewing the involvement of neuropeptides in various psychiatric diseases, particularly in depression, and anxiety disorders. General features of neuropeptides are first described, including the history of their discovery, their definition, classification, biosynthesis, transport, release, inactivation, as well as their interaction with specific neuronal receptors. The diff...

SYNOPSIS. I present an overview of recent research on the isolation and characterization of members of the crustacean hyperglycemic hormone (CHH) neuropeptide family. Members of this arthropod-specific family include CHH, molt-inhibiting hormone (MIH), vitellogenesis-inhibiting hormone (VIH), and mandibular organ-inhibiting hormone (MOIH). There are two subfamilies of this neuropeptide group, b...

The use of orphan G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) as targets to identify new transmitters has led over the last decade to the discovery of 12 novel neuropeptide families. Each one of these new neuropeptides has opened its own field of research, has brought new insights in distinct pathophysiological conditions and has offered new potentials for therapeutic applications. Interestingly, sever...

Neuropeptides are found in many mammalian CNS neurons where they play key roles in modulating neuronal activity. In contrast to amino acid transmitter release at the synapse, neuropeptide release is not restricted to the synaptic specialization, and after release, a neuropeptide may diffuse some distance to exert its action through a G protein-coupled receptor. Some neuropeptides such as hypocr...

The anti-inflammatory mechanisms of minocycline, an antibiotic used in the treatment of the inflammatory component of acne, are only partially understood. In addition to inflammation due to cytokines (IL-1, IL-6, TNF-alpha, etc.), recent studies have shown that neuropeptide-mediated neurogenic inflammation may play an important role in cutaneous inflammation. The purpose of this study was to in...

We investigated the possible relation between neuropeptides and cerebral vasoconstriction in samples of ventricular or cisternal cerebrospinal fluid from 14 patients with subarachnoid hemorrhage. Neuropeptide Y, calcitonin gene-related peptide, atrial natriuretic peptide, and pituitary polypeptide 7B2 were present in the cerebrospinal fluid of these patients. Concentrations of calcitonin gene-r...

To understand the structural and chemical basis for insect neuropeptide activity, we have designed, synthesized, and determined the conformation of a biologically active cyclic analog of the pyrokinins, an insect neuropeptide family that mediates myotropic (visceral muscle contractile) activity. Members of this insect neuropeptide family share the common C-terminal pentapeptide sequence Phe-Xaa...

Objective(s) Recent studies on human indicate that the introduction of therapeutic use of tolerogenic dendritic cell (DC) for chronic inflammatory conditions is imminent. For the purpose of defining CGRP potency in tolerogenic DC production, we investigated the phenotype and IL-'2 production of DCs generated from the monocytes of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients in the presence of the calcit...