Electronic Real-Time Monitoring Reveals Limited Adherence to Long-Term Opioid Prescriptions in Pain Patients.

Background: Pain management physicians are increasingly focused on limiting prescription opioid abuse, yet existing tools for monitoring adherence have limited accuracy. Medication event monitoring system (MEMS) is an emerging technology for tracking medication usage in real-time but has not been tested in chronic pain patients on long-term opioid regimens.

Objective: We conducted a pilot clinical trial to investigate the utility of MEMS for monitoring opioid adherence and compared to traditional methods including self-report diaries, urine drug screen (UDS), and physicians' opinions.

μ-opioid receptor agonists and psychedelics: pharmacological opportunities and challenges.

Opioid misuse and opioid-involved overdose deaths are a massive public health problem involving the intertwined misuse of prescription opioids for pain management with the emergence of extremely potent fentanyl derivatives, sold as standalone products or adulterants in counterfeit prescription opioids or heroin. The incidence of repeated opioid overdose events indicates a problematic use pattern consistent with the development of the medical condition of opioid use disorder (). Prescription and illicit opioids reduce pain perception by activating µ-opioid receptors () localized to the central nervous system ().

Ghrelin receptor antagonist JMV2959 blunts cocaine and oxycodone drug-seeking, but not self-administration, in male rats.

The drug overdose crisis has spawned serious health consequences, including the increased incidence of substance use disorders (SUDs), conditions manifested by escalating medical and psychological impairments. While medication management is a key adjunct in SUD treatment, this crisis has crystallized the need to develop additional therapeutics to facilitate extended recovery from SUDs. The "hunger hormone" ghrelin acts by binding to the growth hormone secretagogue receptor 1α (GHS1αR) to control homeostatic and hedonic aspects of food intake and has been implicated in the mechanisms underlying SUDs.

Discovery of Novel Oleamide Analogues as Brain-Penetrant Positive Allosteric Serotonin 5-HT Receptor and Dual 5-HT/5-HT Receptor Modulators.

The serotonin 5-HT receptor (5-HTR) and 5-HTR localize to the brain and share overlapping signal transduction facets that contribute to their roles in cognition, mood, learning, and memory. Achieving selective targeting of these receptors is challenged by the similarity in their 5-HT orthosteric binding pockets. A fragment-based discovery approach was employed to design and synthesize novel oleamide analogues as selective 5-HTR or dual 5-HTR/5-HTR positive allosteric modulators (PAMs).

Heightened cocaine-seeking in male rats associates with a distinct transcriptomic profile in the medial prefrontal cortex.

Drug overdose deaths involving cocaine have skyrocketed, an outcome attributable in part to the lack of FDA-approved medications for the treatment of cocaine use disorder (CUD), highlighting the need to identify new pharmacotherapeutic targets. Vulnerability to cocaine-associated environmental contexts and stimuli serves as a risk factor for relapse in CUD recovery, with individual differences evident in the motivational aspects of these cues. The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) provides top-down control of striatal circuitry to regulate the incentive-motivational properties of cocaine-associated stimuli.

Liquid Biopsy-Based Biomarkers of Inflammatory Nociception Identified in Male Rats.

Physicians are challenged in treating pain patients due to the lack of quantifiable, objective methods of measuring pain in the clinic; pain sensation is multifaceted and subjective to each individual. There is a critical need for point-of-care quantification of accessible biomarkers to provide objective analyses beyond the subjective pain scales currently employed in clinical care settings. In the present study, we employed an animal model to test the hypothesis that circulating regulators of the inflammatory response directly associate with an objective behavioral response to inflammatory pain.

Inherent Motor Impulsivity Associates with Specific Gene Targets in the Rat Medial Prefrontal Cortex.

High impulsivity characterizes a myriad of neuropsychiatric diseases, and identifying targets for neuropharmacological intervention to reduce impulsivity could reveal transdiagnostic treatment strategies. Motor impulsivity (impulsive action) reflects in part the failure of "top-down" executive control by the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). The present study profiled the complete set of mRNA molecules expressed from genes (transcriptome) in the mPFC of male, outbred rats stably expressing high (HI) or low (LI) motor impulsivity based upon premature responses in the 1-choice serial reaction time (1-CSRT) task.

Suppression of cocaine relapse-like behaviors upon pimavanserin and lorcaserin co-administration.

Cocaine use disorder (CUD) is a major public health challenge for which there are no pharmacotherapeutics approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The propensity to relapse in CUD involves several vulnerability factors including sensitivity to cues associated with cocaine-taking. Serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine, 5-HT) neurotransmission, particularly through the 5-HT receptor (5-HTR) and 5-HT receptor (5-HTR), is mechanistically linked to cocaine-seeking in preclinical models.

Vortioxetine Differentially Modulates MK-801-Induced Changes in Visual Signal Detection Task Performance and Locomotor Activity.

Attention impairment is a common feature of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), and MDD-associated cognitive dysfunction may play an important role in determining functional status among this patient population. Vortioxetine is a multimodal antidepressant that may improve some aspects of cognitive function in MDD patients, and may indirectly increase glutamate neurotransmission in brain regions classically associated with attention function. Previous non-clinical research suggests that vortioxetine has limited effects on attention.

Effects of the noncompetitive N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor antagonist ketamine on visual signal detection performance in rats.

The noncompetitive N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor antagonist ketamine produces consistent, rapid, and sustained antidepressant effects in patients suffering from treatment-resistant depression. However, ketamine-induced cognitive impairments remain a major concern. The present study sought to extend the preclinical evaluation of ketamine-induced cognitive impairments by evaluating the dose (1.

Full Fatty Acid Amide Hydrolase Inhibition Combined with Partial Monoacylglycerol Lipase Inhibition: Augmented and Sustained Antinociceptive Effects with Reduced Cannabimimetic Side Effects in Mice.

Inhibition of fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH) or monoacylglycerol lipase (MAGL), the primary hydrolytic enzymes for the respective endocannabinoids N-arachidonoylethanolamine (AEA) and 2-arachidonylglycerol (2-AG), produces antinociception but with minimal cannabimimetic side effects. Although selective inhibitors of either enzyme often show partial efficacy in various nociceptive models, their combined blockade elicits augmented antinociceptive effects, but side effects emerge. Moreover, complete and prolonged MAGL blockade leads to cannabinoid receptor type 1 (CB1) receptor functional tolerance, which represents another challenge in this potential therapeutic strategy.