Background: Buprenorphine sublingual tablets are now available in Iran for opioid detoxification in clinics. Aim of the present study was to compare the efficiency of buprenorphine with buprenorphine/naloxone in short-term detoxification in a group of Iranian male opioid-dependent patients. Methods:A double-blind trial was carried out on a gro...

Clinical pain conditions may remain responsive to opiate analgesics for extended periods, but such persistent acute pain can undergo a transition to an opiate-resistant chronic pain state that becomes a much more serious clinical problem. To test the hypothesis that cellular mechanisms of chronic pain in the primary afferent also contribute to the development of opiate resistance, we used a rec...

Chronic treatment of pain with opiate drugs can lead to analgesic tolerance and drug dependence. Although all opiate drugs can promote tolerance and dependence in practice, the severity of those unwanted side effects differs depending on the drug used. Although each opiate drug has its own unique set of pharmacological profiles, methadone is the only clinically used opioid drug that produces su...

The mechanisms by which morphine-induced analgesia and tolerance and physical dependence on morphine arise have been the subject of intense study, and much work has pointed to the involvement of cAMP-mediated events in the neuroadaptive phenomena leading to morphine tolerance and/or dependence. We overexpressed an opioid receptor-stimulatable form of adenylyl cyclase (type 7) in the central ner...

Chronic morphine administration increases levels of adenylyl cyclase and cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA) activity in the locus coeruleus (LC), which contributes to the severalfold activation of LC neurons that occurs during opiate withdrawal. A role for the transcription factor cAMP response element-binding protein (CREB) in mediating the opiate-induced upregulation of the cAMP pathway has ...

BACKGROUND Health Related Quality of Life (HRQL) of opiate users has been studied in treatment settings, where assistance for drug use was sought. In this study we ascertain factors related to HRQL of young opiate users recruited outside treatment facilities, considering both genders separately. METHODS Current opiate users (18-30 y) were recruited in outdoor settings in three Spanish cities ...

Opiates produce significant and persistent changes in synaptic transmission; knowledge of the proteins involved in these changes may help to understand the molecular mechanisms underlying opiate dependence. Using an integrated quantitative proteomics and systems biology approach, we explored changes in the presynaptic protein profile following a paradigm of chronic morphine administration that ...

The high prevalence of HIV infection and drug dependence among prisoners, combined with the sharing of injecting drug equipment, make prisons a high-risk environment for the transmission of HIV. Ultimately, this contributes to HIV epidemics in the communities to which prisoners return on their release. We reviewed the effectiveness of interventions to reduce injecting drug use risk behaviours a...