Morphine tolerance is a challenging clinical problem that limits its clinical application in pain treatment. Non-coding microRNAs (miRNAs) modulate gene expression in a post transcriptional manner, and their dysregulation causes various diseases. However, the significance of miRNAs in morphine tolerance is still poorly understood. In the present study, we hypothesized that microRNA-365 (miR-365...

Body temperature and pituitary-adrenal responses to restraint (15 min or 4 h) stress were evaluated in nondependent and morphine-dependent rats. Male Sprague-Dawley rats were treated twice daily with increasing doses of morphine (10-100 mg/kg, s.c.) for 16 days. Transmitters were implanted in the peritoneal cavity to monitor body temperature and blood was collected for hormone assays. Acute wit...

The development of opioid-induced analgesic tolerance and hyperalgesia is a clinical challenge for managing chronic pain. Adaptive changes in protein translation in the nervous system are thought to promote opioid tolerance and hyperalgesia; however, how opioids drive such changes remains elusive. Here, we report that mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), which governs most protein translation,...

Morphine has long been known to have immunosuppressive properties in vivo, but the molecular and immunologic changes induced by it are incompletely understood. To explore how these changes interact with lentiviral infections in vivo, animals from two nonhuman primate species (African green monkeys and pigtailed macaques) were provided morphine and studied using a systems biology approach. Biolo...

INTRODUCTION Short acting narcotics are not available in Pakistan and the supply of drugs like morphine and pethidine is short and erratic; therefore there is a need for investigating acceptable alternatives for analgesia, to be used for balanced anaesthesia. OBJECTIVE We studied the agonist-antagonist narcotic nalbuphine compared to morphine, for intra and postoperative pain relief in total ...

Lesioning of the nervous system can produce a form of pathological pain called “neuropathic pain” that is characterized by sensory deficit, burning sensation, hyperalgesia and allodynia (Cui et al., 2000). The mechanisms underlying neuropathic pain have been studied extensively. Abundant evidence has indicated that aside from the neural component, the non-neural cells of the CNS, such as glial ...

Antagonists of the NMDA type of excitatory amino acid (EAA) receptor attenuate or reverse the development of tolerance to the analgesic effects of the mu opioid agonist morphine, the delta-1 opioid agonist DPDPE but not the kappa-1 agonist U50,488H or the kappa-3 agonist naloxone benzoylhydrazone. The role of the AMPA subtype of EAA receptor in analgesic tolerance was examined using LY293558, a...

Correspondence: Shailendra Kapoor 2300 E Cary St Richmond, VA 23223, USA Tel +1 804 2342345 Fax +1 804 3454561 Email [email protected] To the editor The recent article by Villesen et al in a recent issue of your journal was most interesting. Recent studies show that the potency of morphine in efficacious pain control may be influenced greatly by polymorphisms of certain genes. For inst...

Currently, opioid-based drugs are the most effective pain relievers that are widely used in the treatment of pain. However, the analgesic efficacy of opioids is significantly limited by the development of tolerance after repeated opioid administration. Glutamate receptors have been reported to critically participate in the development and maintenance of opioid tolerance, but the underlying mech...