Perspectives An estimated 6.5 to 13.2 million people with opioid dependence, representing more than half of the world's estimated number, live in Asia. 1 Although most people in Asia who are opioid dependent use heroin or opium, the use of pharmaceutical opioids, mainly through the injecting route, has raised concern in recent years. and Sri Lanka – the estimated number of people who inject dru...

Opioid tolerance, dependence, and addiction are all manifestations of brain changes resulting from chronic opioid abuse. The opioid abuser's struggle for recovery is in great part a struggle to overcome the effects of these changes. Medications such as methadone, LAAM, buprenorphine, and naltrexone act on the same brain structures and processes as addictive opioids, but with protective or norma...

OPIOID DEPENDENCE AND ITS ASSOCIATED MORBIDity, mortality, and social costs continue to plague societies around the world. Opioid dependence is characterized by physical dependence as evidenced by tolerance and withdrawal and by behavioral problems, including the inability to control opioid use, opioid use despite adverse consequences, and social dysfunction. The 2003 National Survey on Drug Us...

Background: In India, one of the most common substances for which people seek treatment is opioids (including taken by injecting route). This group often characterized use multiple substances. Various biological, social and psychological factors have been implicated in initiation maintenance substance disorders, example, family history, getting involved with deviant peer group, presence other p...

Background Opioid receptors belong to the rhodopsin subclass within the superfamily of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCR), which are characterized by the presence of seven transmembrane (7TM) helices. They interact with morphine and related opioid alkaloids as well as with endogenous opioid peptides. There are three main types of opioid receptors (μ, δ, ), which are differently implicated in op...

OBJECTIVES Healthcare professionals (HCPs) with opioid dependence are at risk for relapse and death, particularly in the first year of recovery; however, maintenance treatment with opioid agonists is controversial in this safety-sensitive group. We evaluated long-term safety, tolerability, and treatment outcomes of injectable, intramuscular, extended-release naltrexone (XR-NTX) in opioid-depend...

INTRODUCTION As a primary point of contact within the health care system, family physicians are able to play a vital role in identifying individuals with substance use disorders and connecting them to the appropriate treatment. However, there is very little data available on whether family physicians are actively screening for and treating substance use disorders. The objective of the current s...

UNLABELLED Previous studies have not examined patterns of pain treatment use among patients seeking office-based buprenorphine-naloxone treatment (BNT) for opioid dependence. OBJECTIVES To examine, among individuals with pain seeking BNT for opioid dependence, the use of pain treatment modalities, perceived efficacy of prior pain treatment, and interest in pursuing pain treatment while in BNT...

BACKGROUND Methadone maintenance was the first widely used form of opioid replacement therapy developed to treat heroin dependence, and it remains the best-researched treatment for this problem. Despite the widespread use of methadone in maintenance treatment for opioid dependence in many countries, it is a controversial treatment whose effectiveness has been disputed. OBJECTIVES To evaluate ...

objectives: dependence and tolerance are major restricting factors in the clinical use of opioid analgesics. in the present study, the effects of thymoquinone, the major constituent of nigella sativa seeds, on morphine dependence and tolerance were investigated in mice. materials and methods: male adult nmri mice were made tolerant and dependent by repeated injections of morphine (50, 50, and 7...