Objectives To identify trends in concurrent use of a benzodiazepine and an opioid and to identify the impact of these trends on admissions to hospital and emergency room visits for opioid overdose.Design Retrospective analysis of claims data, 2001-13.Setting Administrative health claims database.Participants 315 428 privately insured people aged 18-64 who were continuously enrolled in a health ...

Activation by opioid receptors of cell proliferation was examined with fibroblast cell lines stably expressing either delta-opioid or mu-opioid receptors. Addition of [D-Ala2, D-Leu5]-enkephalin or [D-Pen2,D-Pen5]-enkephalin to Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells transfected with delta-opioid receptor cDNA resulted in an agonist concentration-dependent potentiation of fetal calf serum (FCS)-stimu...

INTRODUCTION The use of chronic opioid therapy for chronic non-cancer pain is growing and is now accepted as an effective treatment modality. AREAS COVERED Although there are guidelines and reviews for chronic opioid therapy for chronic non-cancer pain patients, physicians may still have concerns and be reluctant to prescribe strong opioids for chronic non-cancer pain. Common issues and conce...

Opioid receptors of the mu-, delta- and kappa-subtypes mediate the potent analgesic and addictive actions of opioid drugs. They also regulate responses to pain, stress and emotions when activated by endogenous opioid peptides. Recently, mice lacking opioid receptors or opioid peptides have been produced by gene targeting, providing molecular tools to study opioid function in vivo. Observations ...

PURPOSE OF REVIEW Recent studies highlighting between-opioid differences in patient outcomes, opioid receptor interactions and animal study findings implicating a 'fine control' mechanism underpinning potential diversity in opioid receptor signalling that could potentially be exploited to develop novel opioid analgesics with improved tolerability are reviewed. RECENT FINDINGS Recent clinical ...

Patients requiring acute pain management may be opioid dependent as a result of either recreational or therapeutic opioid use, including those in opioid addiction programmes. Pain in these patients is often under-estimated and under-treated. In addiction, drug-seeking behaviour differentiates it from simple dependence. With few randomised controlled trials, current evidence predominantly consis...

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...

Cyclic AMP (cAMP) regulates a number of cellular processes and modulates cell death induction. cAMP levels are altered upon stimulation of specific G-protein-coupled receptors inhibiting or activating adenylyl cyclases. Opioid receptor stimulation can activate inhibitory Gi-proteins which in turn block adenylyl cyclase activity reducing cAMP. Opioids such as D,L-methadone induce cell death in l...

BACKGROUND Determinants of the duration of opioid use after surgery have not been reported. We hypothesized that both preoperative psychological distress and substance abuse would predict more prolonged opioid use after surgery. METHODS Between January 2007 and April 2009, a prospective, longitudinal inception cohort study enrolled 109 of 134 consecutively approached patients undergoing maste...

Regulation of the mu-opioid receptor gene by opioid analgesic drugs has not been observed in rats and mice following in vivo treatments that produce tolerance. Although in vivo heterologous regulation of mu-opioid receptor mRNA by non-opioid compounds has been reported, the failure to observe changes in mu-opioid receptor mRNA levels in vivo after treatment with opioid agonists raised the possi...