Recently it has been revealed that some agents that are not able to interact with opioid receptors play an important role in regulating the pharmacological actions of opioids. Especially, some of them show biphasic modulation on opioid functions, which enhance opioid analgesia, but inhibit tolerance to and substance dependence on opioids. We would like to call these agents which do not interact...

Agonists acting at alpha2 adrenergic and opioid receptors have analgesic properties and act synergistically when co-administered in the spinal cord; this synergy may also contribute to the potency and efficacy of spinally administered morphine. The lack of subtype-selective pharmacological agents has previously impeded the definition of the adrenergic receptor subtype(s) mediating these effects...

UNLABELLED Postsurgical pain management remains a significant challenge. Liposome bupivacaine, as part of a multimodal analgesic regimen, has been shown to significantly reduce postsurgical opioid consumption, hospital length of stay (LOS), and hospitalization costs in gastrointestinal (GI) surgery, compared with intravenous (IV) opioid-based patient-controlled analgesia (PCA). Pooled results f...

Social and behavioral scientists have proposed that a person's belief system crucially influences his or her behaviour, and therefore may affect outcomes of pain management. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between analgesic beliefs, analgesic adherence and pain experience amongst Taiwanese cancer outpatients. The cross-sectional study included 92 oncology outpatients i...

BACKGROUND The majority of surgical patients experience significant levels of pain after a procedure. While opioid analgesics have been a mainstay of postsurgical analgesic regimens, recent evidence has supported the use of multimodal therapy as a way to decrease opioid usage with its concomitant opioid-related adverse events. The goal of multimodal therapy is to minimize the negative effects o...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Kyotorphin (KTP; L-Tyr-L-Arg), an endogenous neuropeptide, is potently analgesic when delivered directly to the central nervous system. Its weak analgesic effects after systemic administration have been explained by inability to cross the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and detract from the possible clinical use of KTP as an analgesic. In this study, we aimed to increase the li...

Introduction. This study aimed to determine if preoperative psychological tests combined with simple pain prediction ratings could predict pain intensity and analgesic usage following cesarean delivery (CD). Methods. 50 healthy women undergoing scheduled CD with spinal anesthesia comprised the prospective study cohort. Preoperative predictors included 4 validated psychological questionnaires (A...

The increased use of opioids in the treatment of chronic pain encourages the search for drugs with low abuse and tolerance potential but with potent analgesic activity. Opioid agonist-antagonists and partial agonists have less abuse potential than do mu opioid receptor agonists such as morphine, and have been used for many years for their analgesic affects. Recently they have been approved for ...