Using a cohort of more than 17,000 men and women followed for 4 to 7 years, Norwegian investigators Skurtveit and colleagues looked at recent opioid prescriptions for subjects who had earlier reported using benzodiazepines but no opioids. They came to the intriguing conclusion that benzodiazepine use contributes to later opioid use among subjects who had reported no opioid use to start. In fact...

Objectives To evaluate the risk of all cause mortality associated with initiating compared with not initiating benzodiazepines in adults, and to address potential treatment barriers and confounding related to the use of a non-active comparator group.Design Retrospective cohort study.Setting Large de-identified US commercial healthcare database (Optum Clinformatics Datamart).Participants 1:1 hig...

compared to approximately 20 tests during a similar 3-month period in 2006. Because of the unacceptably high false-positive rates for benzodiazepine screening using the Multigent reagents and the significant increase in toxicology workload and costs, the VA Boston Healthcare System elected to switch to the Abbott/ SYVA reagents for benzodiazepine screening in August 2007. It is our understandin...

The abuse of prescription drugs has led to a significant increase in emergency department (ED) visits and drug-related deaths over the past decade. Opioid pain relievers (OPRs) and benzodiazepines are the prescription drugs most commonly involved in these events. Excessive alcohol consumption also accounts for a significant health burden and is common among groups that report high rates of pres...

OBJECTIVE The primary disadvantage of high-potency benzodiazepine treatment for panic disorder is the difficulty of discontinuing the treatment. During treatment discontinuation, new symptoms may emerge and anxiety may return, preventing many patients from successfully discontinuing their treatment. In this controlled, randomized trial the authors investigated the efficacy of a cognitive-behavi...

Disulfiram is an aldehyde dehydrogenase inhibitor that is widely used as an adjunctive agent in the treatment of patients with severe chronic alcoholism. Recent positron emission tomography (PET) studies of local cerebral metabolic rates for glucose (ICMRglc) and benzodiazepine receptor binding in alcoholic patients have shown regional cerebral abnormalities; however, some of the patients were ...

Binding levels of [3H]Ro5-4864, a ligand selective for peripheral-type benzodiazepine receptors, are substantially higher in homogenates of the olfactory bulb than in the rest of the brain. Among peripheral tissues evaluated, high levels of [3H]Ro5-4864 binding are found in the nasal epithelium. Drug displacement studies show that these binding sites are pharmacologically of the peripheral type...

The hypothesis that benzodiazepine-induced hyperphagia is due to a specific enhancement of the palatability of foods has been supported by previous 'taste reactivity' studies of affective (hedonic and aversive) reactions to taste palatability. Diazepam and chlordiazepoxide enhance hedonic reactions of rats (rhythmic tongue protrusions, etc.) to sweet tastes in a receptor-specific fashion. A rol...

The expedient synthesis of various 1,4-benzodiazepine-2,5-dione compounds, particularly those having substituents at the C3-, N1- and N4-positions is achieved. The important features in these synthetic strategies include: (i) using the coupling reaction of isatoic anhydride with alpha-amino ester for direct construction of the core structure of 1,4-benzodiazepine-2,5-dione; (ii) using potassium...

The ability of several homologous benzodiazepine and heterologous nonbenzodiazepine ligands to alter the conductance increase induced in spinal cord neurons by gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) was determined. Complete dose-response curves were carried out on individual neurons, reducing error introduced by cell-to-cell variability. The efficacies of modulation differ for "classical" benzodiazepin...