Addiction to drugs is a major contemporary public health issue, characterized by maladaptive behavior to obtain and consume an increasing amount of drugs at the expense of the individual's health and social and personal life. We discovered abnormalities in fronto-striatal brain systems implicated in self-control in both stimulant-dependent individuals and their biological siblings who have no h...

Prime diagnostic criteria for drug addiction include uncontrollable urges to obtain drugs and reduced behavioral responding for natural rewards. Cellular adaptations in the glutamate projection from the prefrontal cortex (PFC) to the nucleus accumbens have been discovered in rats withdrawn from cocaine that may underlie these cardinal features of addiction. A hypothesis is articulated that alte...

in the 1960s, discovery of pleasure system (defined as reward system) in the brain that may underlie drug reward and addiction encouraged many scientists to investigate the mechanisms by which drug abuse affects central nervous system function. in this regard, investigators developed several drugs targeting the brain reward system for drug dependence therapy. however, no positive results obtain...

146 T here is an emerging consensus that drug addiction is a form of maladaptive learning. Drugs of abuse usurp the neuronal circuitry involved in motivation and reward, leading to aberrant engagement of learning processes. As a result, drug-associated cues can trigger craving and compulsive drug-seeking behavior, and voluntary control over drug use is lost. Abused drugs can also modulate long-...

OBJECTIVES Drug dependence as a chronic disorder is reversible over time and has a cost burden for individuals, families, and society. An individual who has stopped taking drugs for a long time may start taking drugs again. The variables affecting the reuse of drugs are not well known. Therefore a study of the factors that increase the length of time away from drugs is essential. METHODS This...

People who use drugs are at higher risk of HIV: directly through the sharing of injecting equipment, indirectly through associated risk behavior, and physiologically through the substances' impact on the immune system. Drug users, especially people who inject drugs (PWID) are a bridge to the general population. The treatment of drug addiction and provision of harm reduction interventions have i...

Sex differences are present for all of the phases of drug abuse (initiation, escalation of use, addiction, and relapse following abstinence). While there are some differences among specific classes of abused drugs, the general pattern of sex differences is the same for all drugs of abuse. Females begin regularly self-administering licit and illicit drugs of abuse at lower doses than do males, u...

Drugs and food exert their reinforcing effects in part by increasing dopamine (DA) in limbic regions, which has generated interest in understanding how drug abuse/addiction relates to obesity. Here, we integrate findings from positron emission tomography imaging studies on DA's role in drug abuse/addiction and in obesity and propose a common model for these two conditions. Both in abuse/addicti...

We are pleased to present the first issue of Emerging Trends in Drugs, Addiction, and Health. This is official Journal International Society for Study Drugs, a new, Gold Open Access title. The mutual goal both Society Journal, provide a platform rapid exchange multidisciplinary knowledge on novel psychoactive substances (NPSs), addictions, their health effects.