It is widely believed that opioid withdrawal symptoms contribute to relapse to opioid use, but relapse is highly probable in experienced users even after prolonged abstinence and during opioid maintenance therapy. We have found using an animal model of relapse, the reinstatement procedure, that the two events that reliably reinstate heroin-seeking behavior are reexposure to heroin, and brief ex...

BACKGROUND: Heroin injection is associated with health and social problems including hepatitis C virus (HCV) transmission. Few studies have examined the circumstances surrounding initiation to heroin injecting, especially current users initiating others. The current study aimed to examine the age of first heroin use and injection; administration route of first heroin use; relationship to initia...

Environmental stimuli and conditioned cues associated with heroin can induce drug-seeking behavior, but how heroin lapse interacts with cues is unclear. Rats were trained to nose-poke for i.v. heroin for 14 days and then tested for heroin seeking after withdrawal from heroin self-administration. Heroin seeking induced by cues persisted over several weeks after withdrawal, and the responding was...

BACKGROUND Heroin use and overdose deaths have increased significantly in the United States. Assessing trends in heroin use among demographic and particular substance-using groups can inform prevention efforts. METHODS FDA and CDC analyzed data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health and National Vital Statistics System reported during 2002-2013. Trends in heroin use among demographic...

AIMS To estimate the annual incidence of heroin use in Spain. PARTICIPANTS AND DESIGN Data on individuals' year of first heroin use (from 1971 to 2005), year of first heroin treatment between 1991 and 2005 and most frequent route of heroin administration when presenting to treatment were obtained from the Spanish Drug Observatory Register and used to calculate the delay between onset and trea...

OBJECTIVE To determine whether supervised medical prescription of heroin can successfully treat addicts who do not sufficiently benefit from methadone maintenance treatment. DESIGN Two open label randomised controlled trials. SETTING Methadone maintenance programmes in six cities in the Netherlands. PARTICIPANTS 549 heroin addicts. INTERVENTIONS Inhalable heroin (n = 375) or injectable ...

Immunotherapy can provide a supplemental treatment strategy against heroin use on the principle of sequestering the active drug in the bloodstream, thereby reducing its distribution to the brain. Previous studies have shown that heroin's first metabolite, 6-monoacetylmorphine (6-MAM), is the main mediator of acute heroin effects. The objective of the present study was to characterize the pharma...

In brain regions that have been implicated in the reinstatement of drug-seeking, the prelimbic cortex has emerged as a critical regulator of relapse behaviours. Here, the effects of prelimbic cortex dopamine (DA) D(1) receptor antagonism on drug-seeking produced by heroin-paired cues, or by a single priming dose of heroin are examined. Rats lever-pressed daily for i.v. heroin discretely paired ...

BACKGROUND Existing incidence estimates of heroin use are usually based on one information source. This study aims to incorporate more sources to estimate heroin use incidence trends in Spain between 1971 and 2005. METHODS A multi-state model was constructed, whereby the initial state "heroin consumer" is followed by transition to either "admitted to first treatment" or to "left heroin use" (...

The orexin/hypocretin system is involved in several addiction-related behaviors. In the present experiments, we examined the involvement of orexin in heroin reinforcement and relapse by administering the orexin 1 receptor antagonist SB-334867 prior to heroin self-administration or prior to cue-induced or heroin-induced reinstatement of extinguished heroin seeking in male Sprague Dawley rats. SB...