A B S T R A C T The drugs available for the management of acute orofacial pain have changed very little since the introduction of ibuprofen into practice 40 years ago. Orally effective opioids, acetaminophen, aspirin and NSAIDs remain the mainstay of analgesic therapy. Increased recognition of the societal and personal impact of opioid diversion and abuse requires re-examination of the traditio...

The therapeutic entities which have been derived from the constituents of opium, the dried exudate of the incised capsule of the opium poppy, have probably spawned more scientific publications than any other drug group. The observations that only the laevorotatory isomer of morphine, the active constituent of opium, was active and that most opioid analgesic drugs had similarities in structure, ...

The generation of potent opioid analgesics that lack the side effects of traditional opioids may be possible by targeting truncated splice variants of the μ-opioid receptor. μ-Opioids act through GPCRs that are generated from the Oprm1 gene, which undergoes extensive alternative splicing. The most abundant set of Oprm1 variants encode classical full-length 7 transmembrane domain (7TM) μ-opioid ...

Consumers increasingly use online pharmacies. However, illicit pharmacies endanger consumer welfare with unapproved and counterfeit drugs. By linking Food Drug Administration (FDA) warning letter content observations of the 1108 websites cited in those letters, we identify factors associated FDA-requested compliance active/inactive website status. One five failed to comply FDA recommendations. ...

Opioids are commonly used in chronic pain management. Their role in chronic pain is met with controversy, with reports of abuse. Many studies have shown that urine drug screens can detect inappropriate opioid use or illicit drug use among patients receiving opioids for chronic pain. In this study, failed urine drug screens of 89 patients in an interventional pain management practice were analyz...

Pain management is complicated by the levels of unacceptable opioid abuse and few safe alternatives. In 2011, the Institute of Medicine estimated 116 million American adults suffered from chronic pain [1]. In 2008, the CDC reported drug-related death rates more than tripled since 1990 and opioid related deaths to be higher than that of heroin and cocaine combined [2]. Effective pain treatment o...

The catastrophic effects of opioids use on public health and the economy are documented clearly in numerous studies. Repeated morphine administration can lead to either a decrease (tolerance) or an increase (sensitization) in its behavioral and rewarding effects. Morphine-induced sensitization is a major problem and plays an important role in abuse of the opioid drugs. Studies reported that mor...