Renal disease in cocaine and heroin users is associated with the nephrotic syndrome, acute glomerulonephritis, amyloidosis, interstitial nephritis, and rhabdomyolysis. The pathophysiologic basis of cocaine-related renal injury involves renal hemodynamic changes, glomerular matrix synthesis and degradation, and oxidative stress and induction of renal atherogenesis. Heroin is the most commonly ab...

Several medications are approved for treatment of opiate abuse, but determinants of their clinical effectiveness are not completely understood. States of opiate dependence or withdrawal may constitute one important set of determinants. To test this hypothesis, the effects of naloxone, buprenorphine, and methadone were assessed on choice between heroin and food in nondependent rhesus monkeys and...

Ethnographic research identifies brokering (a.k.a., “copping for others”) as an important and popular way people who use heroin acquire the drug by making purchases for their peers. Brokering is when a customer buys drugs for a fellow customer using the buyer’s money and is paid using drug the buyer purchases. This distributes heroin costs. Heroin dealers obviously manipulate price and/or drug ...

Low, nonreinforcing doses of heroin have been shown to shift the dose-response function of cocaine leftward in rhesus monkeys trained under a progressive-ratio schedule of i.v. drug injection. Our study sought to determine 1) whether a reciprocal enhancement of heroin self-administration would be observed when heroin was combined with low, nonreinforcing doses of cocaine, and 2) whether self-ad...

Density functional theory calculations were carried out to study the interaction of heroin molecule with pristine and N-dopedTiO2 anatase nanoparticles. The oxygen atom of heroin molecule was found to be the binding site on the heroin molecule. In contrast, the binding site of TiO2 nanoparticle was positioned over the fivefold coordinated titanium atoms. The results showed that the adsorption e...

Abstract Background: Long-term use of opioids has acute effects on homeostasis of the body. Discovering the impacts of opioids on hematological parameters of narcotics withdrawal and dependents blood may be helpful in recognizing the homeostasis condition of their body for the useful treatment. Methods: In this study a cross-sectional method was applied. The abusers of opium and her...

INJECTABLE HEROIN MAINTENANCE has been advocated as a form of treatment for opioid dependence that would attract, and retain in treatment, addicts who have either not sought treatment or who have failed at other forms of treatment, including methadone maintenance. Advocates of heroin maintenance argue that it would increase the proportion of addicts in treatment and reduce heroin use, drug-rela...

BACKGROUND Despite evidence of the effectiveness of injectable opioid treatment compared with oral methadone for chronic heroin addiction, the additional cost of injectable treatment is considerable, and cost-effectiveness uncertain. AIMS To compare the cost-effectiveness of supervised injectable heroin and injectable methadone with optimised oral methadone for chronic refractory heroin addic...

In Australia, as in other comparable countries, the link between heroin addiction and acquisitive crime has been well documented. Around 40% of males incarcerated in Long Bay Gaol for property offences report having used heroin (Dobinson and Ward, 1985), indicating that heroin use is far more common in this group than in community samples, in which reported rates of ever having used heroin are ...

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of pretreatment with risperidone on heroin self-administration and heroin-seeking behaviour induced by cues and heroin priming. Rats were trained to self-administer heroin under a fixed ratio 1 schedule for 2 wk and nose-poke responding was extinguished for 10 d, after which reinstatement of drug seeking was induced by conditioned cues...