Opioids are among the most effective analgesics and the mainstay of pain management. However, concerns about safety and abuse liability have challenged their widespread use by the medical community. Opioid-sparing therapies include drugs that in combination with opioids have the ability to enhance analgesia while decreasing opioid requirement as well as their side effects.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: From 1999 to 2017, more than 400,000 Americans died from a drug overdose death involving an opioid. Early surveillance studies have observed large variations in opioid-involved overdose deaths among different geographic regions and racial/ethnic groups. The purpose of this study was to characterize trends in racial/ethnic opioid-involved overdose deaths across metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas in the United States from 1999 to 2017.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOpioid-sparing adjuncts are treatments that aim to reduce the overall dose of opioids needed to achieve analgesia, hence decreasing the burden of side effects through alternative mechanisms of action. Lorcaserin is a serotonin 5-HT receptor (5-HTR) agonist that has recently been reported to reduce abuse-related effects of the opioid analgesic oxycodone. The goal of our studies was to evaluate the effects of adjunctive lorcaserin on opioid-induced analgesic-like behavior using the tail-flick reflex (TFR) test as a mouse model of acute thermal nociception.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAmong the 47,600 opioid-involved overdose deaths in the United States in 2017, 59.8% (28,466) involved synthetic opioids (1). Since 2013, synthetic opioids, particularly illicitly manufactured fentanyl (IMF), including fentanyl analogs, have been fueling the U.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe HIV-1 regulatory protein, trans-activator of transcription (Tat), interacts with opioids to potentiate neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration within the CNS. These effects may involve the C-C chemokine receptor type 5 (CCR5); however, the behavioral contribution of CCR5 on Tat/opioid interactions is not known. Using a transgenic murine model that expresses HIV-1 Tat protein in a GFAP-regulated, doxycycline-inducible manner, we assessed morphine tolerance, dependence, and reward.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInhibitory synapses comprise only ∼20% of the total synapses in the mammalian brain but play essential roles in controlling neuronal activity. In fact, perturbing inhibitory synapses is associated with complex brain disorders, such as schizophrenia and epilepsy. Although many types of inhibitory synapses exist, these disorders have been strongly linked to defects in inhibitory synapses formed by Parvalbumin-expressing interneurons.
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