BACKGROUND The prevalence of female alcohol and substance abusers has markedly increased. The main objective of this research was to explore personality profiles among females who had alcohol and opiate dependence. AIM The aim of the study is to analyse if there is differences in personality profiles of females addicted to alcohol and opiates. We hypothesized that there might be significant d...

The negative affective symptoms of opiate withdrawal powerfully motivate drug-seeking behavior and may trigger relapse to heroin abuse. To date, no medications exist that effectively relieve the negative affective symptoms of opiate withdrawal. The corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) system has been hypothesized to mediate the motivational effects of drug dependence. The CRF signal is transmit...

This study investigated the effects of the NMDA receptor antagonist MK-801 on the development of morphine dependence in 7-, 14-, and 21-day-old rat pups. For 6.5 days, starting at 1, 8, or 15 days of age, rats were pretreated with MK-801 (0.03 or 0.1 mg/kg, bid) or saline; 15 min later, morphine sulfate (10 mg/kg) or saline was injected to induce opiate dependence. On the afternoon of the seven...

Repeated use of opiate analgesic drugs such as morphine for the relief of chronic pain may result in the development of opiate tolerance and dependence, leading to a narrowing of the drug's therapeutic index and increased side effects. Previous preclinical work has shown that interruption of a signaling cascade involving the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor and NO prevents morphine tolerance. In t...

The medical discipline of narcology in Russia is a subspecialty of psychiatry from the Soviet era and it is given warrant to define the scope of health activities with regard to alcohol and other drug use, drug users, and related problems. Narcological practice is in turn constrained by the State. The emergence of widespread injection opiate use and associated HIV morbidities and mortalities du...

Detoxification, the initial step in the treatment of opiate dependence (Freedman, 1980) has been facing difficulties in our country as the widely used drug methadone is not available. Earlier practices were either abrupt withdrawal or gradual tapering of the dose of the opiate to which the individual was dependent. Recently clonidine has been used with success for detoxification and treatment o...

The aim of the study was to assess two psychological parameters, sensation-seeking (SS) and alienation (AL), in a sample of thirty DSM-III diagnosed opiate dependence cases, and to compare them on these two parameters with two non-drug-abusing control groups, one from the patients own peer groups and the other from the general population. The opiate dependent subjects were found to score higher...

background: high prevalence of risky behaviors in alcohol dependents have been shown in several studies, but correlation between alcohol abuse and risky behaviors and relapse in patients with opiate dependence has been less investigated. this study aimed to determine the effect of alcohol abuse in rate of risk-taking behaviors in opiate dependents patients treated on maintenance program in nort...

Opiate dependence affects about 15,479,000 people worldwide. The effectiveness of opiate substitution treatments (OST) has been widely demonstrated. Buprenorphine plays a particular role in opiate dependence care provision in France. It is widely prescribed by physicians and national opiate substitution treatment guidelines have been available since 2004. In order to study the prescribing of bu...

The symptoms of opiate withdrawal in infants are defined as neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS). NAS is a significant cause of morbidity in term and preterm infants. Factors, such as polysubstance abuse, inadequate prenatal care, nutritional deprivation, and the biology of the developing central nervous system contribute to the challenge of evaluating and treating opiate-induced alterations in t...