Detoxification, the initial step in the treatment of opiate dependence (Freedman, 1980) has been facing difficulties in our country as the widely used drug methadone is not available. Earlier practices were either abrupt withdrawal or gradual tapering of the dose of the opiate to which the individual was dependent. Recently clonidine has been used with success for detoxification and treatment o...

background; methadone maintenance therapy (mmt) is an evidence-based approach for opiate addiction treatment. while its effectiveness in reducing opiate use has been evidently verified, unanswered questions with respect to the cultural scenarios for mmt programs remain unanswered. this study was conducted to explore understanding address mmt initiation among a women-recruited sample of persons ...

background: the common detoxification method is replacement of long effect opiate by short effect opiate and then reducing its amount gradually. more modern method is ultra rapid opiate detoxification (urod) by opiate antagonists, which is performed by general anesthesia. the advantages of two methods have not been confirmed. this study aimed to compare effectiveness and withdrawal rate in both...

introduction: toxic mushrooms are distributed across the globe with over 5000 species. among them, 100 species are responsible for most of the cases of mushroom poisoning. this study aimed to evaluate the epidemiologic pattern of mushroom poisoning among patients referred to the main toxicology center of mashhad province located in north-east of iran. method: this cross-sectional study was cond...

BACKGROUND Although evidence points to a strong link between illicit drug use and crime, robust evidence for temporal order in the relationship is scant. We carried out a systematic review to assess the evidence for pathways through opiate/crack cocaine use and offending to determine temporal order. METHODS A systematic review sourced five databases, three online sources, bibliographies and c...

Ongoing studies from our group support the existence and biological importance of a distinct cellular signaling pathway involving endogenously synthesized, chemically authentic, l-morphine, its cognate mu(3) opiate receptor subtype, and constitutive NO synthase. Based on prior studies indicating evolutionary conservation and adaptation of morphinergic/NO-coupled signaling to mediate autocrine/p...