Drug addiction is a costly and recurring healthcare problem, necessitating a need to understand risk factors and mechanisms of addiction, and to identify new biomarkers. To date, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) for heroin addiction have been limited; moreover they have been restricted to examining samples of European and African-American origin due to difficulty of recruiting samples fro...

Heroin addiction is a wide-reaching problem with a spectrum of damaging social consequences. Currently approved heroin addiction medications include drugs that bind at the same receptors (e.g. opioid receptors) occupied by heroin and/or its metabolites in the brain, but undesired side effects of these treatments, maintenance dependence and relapse to drug taking remains problematic. A vaccine c...

CONTEXT Effective alternatives to long waiting lists for entry into methadone hydrochloride maintenance treatment are needed to reduce the complications of continuing heroin dependence and to increase methadone treatment entry. OBJECTIVE To compare the effectiveness of interim methadone maintenance with that of the usual waiting list condition in facilitating methadone treatment entry and red...

The study aimed to identify the range of buprenorphine doses required to comfortably alleviate symptoms in patients undergoing inpatient heroin withdrawal using a symptom-triggered titration dosing regime, and to identify the patient characteristics that impact upon the buprenorphine dose requirements. The study was conducted in two Australian inpatient withdrawal units, recruiting 63 dependent...

Many people diagnosed with mental illnesses struggle with illicit drug addiction. These individuals are often treated with psychiatric medications, yet little is known about how they experience this treatment. Research on the subjective experience of psychiatric medication use highlights the complex, contradictory, and ambiguous feelings often associated with this treatment. However, for those ...

Both pre-clinical and clinical studies make feasible the use of vaccines as novel therapeutic medications to treat drug addiction. No reports to date have shown the development of structural models of opiate candidate vaccines for treating human addiction to such compounds. Here we report on the initial development of a novel structural formulation of a bi-valent vaccine against morphine/heroin...

Background: Heroin dependency is currently an alarming problem. Objective: To investigate the efficacy of combination of analgesics (NSAIDS), baclofen, clonidine and a single high dose of buprenorphine in heroin detoxification. Results: Administration of combination of, baclofen 75 mg, clonidine 0.2 mg, ibuprofen 1200 mg and a single 57 mg of buprenorphine is very effective for detoxification o...

Heroin dependence is a chronic relapsing brain disorder, characterized by the compulsion to seek and use heroin. Heroin itself has a strong potential to produce subjective experiences characterized by intense euphoria, relaxation and release from craving. The neurofunctional foundations of these perceived effects are not well known. In this study, we have used pharmacological magnetic resonance...