BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Pre-clinical and clinical trials of peripheral opiate antagonists have shed new light on the effects of exogenous and endogenous opioids. CONTENTS This article review preclinical studies and clinical opioid bowel disfunction trials. CONCLUSIONS If approved these drugs may offer potential solutions to important clinical problems in pain management.

This paper describes the techniques for controlling pain by the physical means that are most widely used clinically, particularly in the case of fibromyalgia. They are grouped on the basis of the physical energy used: mechanical, thermal (including magnetic and electromagnetic), and light (LASER). The main underlying neurophysiological mechanisms are gate activation, the stimulation of descendi...

TOPIC PAGE NUMBER 1. Antibiotic Therapy: Principles and Empiric Therapy ...................................................... 1-8 2. Antibiotic Therapy: Strategies for Resistant Infections ................................................. 9-20 3. Non-steroidal Anti-inflammatory Drugs ..................................................................... 21-30 4. Analgesic Drugs: Opiates and Mis...

Naloxone abolished the rise in body temperature seen after bicycle ergometer tests performed by 10 healthy men. This suggests that endogenous opiates play a part in thermal regulation during muscular exercise.

We have shown previously that whereas acute exposure of cultured murine peritoneal macrophages inhibits phagocytosis, chronic exposure results in a putative tolerant/dependent state. We now report similar observations using human cultured monocyte-derived macrophages (hMDM) from a control population and from methadone patients. With hMDM, acute exposure to morphine and methadone inhibited phago...

Opiates and related molecules are medically essential, but their production via field cultivation of opium poppy Papaver somniferum leads to supply inefficiencies and insecurity. As an alternative production strategy, we developed baker's yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a microbial host for the transformation of opiates. Yeast strains engineered to express heterologous genes from P. somniferu...

In membranes from guinea pig cerebellum, a tissue which predominantly contains < opioid receptors, exogenous and endogenous K-selective opioid agonists stimulated low-Km GTPase activity by 11-20% with concentrations for halfmaximal stimulation of 3-23 ~M. Opioid ligands of the and ~ type had no effect on GTPase in these membranes. Similar stimulation of GTPase by K opiates was obtained in rat a...

When mouse neuroblastoma clonal cell line N4TG1 cells were cultured in the presence of opiates or enkephalins, in the range 10(-6)-10(-10) M for 24 hr, a dose-dependent inhibition of the incorporation of [3H]glucosamine and [14C]-galactose into sialoglycosphingolipids and glycoproteins was observed. The gangliosides most affected comigrated in thinlayer chromatographic systems with GM2 (GalNAc[...

The link between substance use and suicide is well established. However, little research analyzes how substance use is related to the method of suicide. This paper analyzes how specific drugs are associated with method of suicide, a critical topic because drug use bears on the etiology of suicide and may lead to policies aimed at deterring suicide. We use the COVDRS and logistic regression to e...

Objectives: To find out the common causes of poisoning in infants and children. Methodology: In a retrospective cross-sectional study we evaluated all infants & children who were hospitalized due to acute poisoning between 2001 to 2004 in two Ahwaz university hospitals. Results: One hundred forty three cases were evaluated, 71% of poisonings occurred in the age range of 1-5 years. Causes were a...