INTRODUCTION The proton pump inhibitor empirical trial, besides the analysis of symptoms, is the main method in the diagnosis of gastro-oesophageal reflux disease-related chest pain. β-Endorphin acts as an endogenous analgesia system. The aim of the study was verify whether β-endorphin plasma level is affected by omeprazole administration and influences the severity of anginal symptoms and outc...

Background. Allergic rhinitis (AR) significantly impairs the quality of life of the patients; however, a questionnaire alone is an insufficient and subjective measure of this condition. Obtaining an objective clinical assessment of the level of impairment will be valuable for its treatment. β-Endorphin is one of the most important mediators of both mental state and specific immunity. Thus, we i...

The secretion of peptide products derived from pro-ACTH/endorphin was examined with several radioimmunoassays and with polyacrylamide gel analyses of immunoprecipitates of radioactively labeled peptides. In studies using a mouse pituitary tumor cell line the accumulation of each of the four molecular forms of adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) in tissue culture medium was shown to be a linear f...

OBJECTIVES Systemic β-endorphin, an endogenous opioid and stress hormone, has been demonstrated to correlate with the postoperative pain intensity, however its putative role as a postoperative pain biomarker has not been cleared. METHODS Thirty patients scheduled for elective hysterectomy were included into the study. Postoperative pain was assessed by a numeric rating scale from 0 to 10. Pla...

CB(2) cannabinoid receptor-selective agonists are promising candidates for the treatment of pain. CB(2) receptor activation inhibits acute, inflammatory, and neuropathic pain responses but does not cause central nervous system (CNS) effects, consistent with the lack of CB(2) receptors in the normal CNS. To date, there has been virtually no information regarding the mechanism of CB(2) receptor-m...

The possible role of different peptidergic systems in the postictal stage of human epilepsy was studied by measuring beta-endorphin, somatostatin, and prolactin levels by radioimmunoassay of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) from nine epileptic patients. The first sample was taken within 2 hours after generalised tonic-clonic convulsion, and the second sample was obtained interictally after 1-4 days wi...

The in vivo pharmacodynamics of the opioid neuropeptide beta-endorphin (a major endogenous agonist at the mu-opioid receptor) is difficult to determine in non-human primate models with translational value, or in humans. The present studies therefore employed a neuroendocrine biomarker assay, prolactin release, to systematically compare the in vivo profile of i.v. beta-endorphin (0.01-0.32 mg/kg...

The kinetics of the previously reported paired basic residue-specific pro-opiomelanocortin-converting enzyme from bovine pituitary intermediate lobe secretory vesicles (Loh, Y. P., Parish, D.C., and Tuteja, R. (1985) J. Biol. Chem. 260, 7194-7205) were studied using human 125I-beta-lipotropin as substrate. The enzyme, at a concentration of 20 ng/100 microliters cleaved human beta-lipotropin to ...