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Opioid dependence found to permanently change brains of rats:
Approximately one-quarter of patients who are prescribed opioids for chronic pain misuse them, with five to 10 percent developing an opioid use disorder or addiction. In a new study, published Jan. 14, 2020 in PNAS, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine found that opioid dependence produced permanent changes in the brains of rats.
More specifically, researchers reported that dependence on oxycodone, a potent opioid painkiller, led to permanent neuro-adaptations of the central nucleus of the amygdala (CeA) at the level of the nociceptin system, a brainwide network that modulates transmission of pain. Downregulation or suppression of the nociceptin system in the CeA led to an increase in activation of GABA receptors in rats highly addicted to opioids. The discovery is consistent with previous findings reporting CeA neuroa-daptations after cocaine and alcohol dependence.
When researchers restored nociceptin levels in the CeA, it resulted in normalization of GABAergic transmission and a reduction of the rats' opioid consumption.
"This suggests the nociceptin system may be a promising target for the treatment of opioid use disorder," said senior author Giordano de Guglielmo, PharmD, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UC San Diego School of Medicine.
"To reveal the role of nociceptin in the central nucleus of the amygdala, we used a multidisciplinary approach with behavioral models, molecular biology and electrophysiology," said first author Marsida Kallupi, PharmD, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry. "That allowed us to conclude that downregulation of this peptide may be partially responsible for excessive opioid addiction-like behaviors."
Marsida Kallupi, Lieselot L. G. Carrette, Jenni Kononoff, Leah C. Solberg Woods, Abraham A. Palmer, Paul Schweitzer, Olivier George, Giordano de Guglielmo. Nociceptin attenuates the escalation of oxycodone self-administration by normalizing CeA–GABA transmission in highly addicted rats. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2020; 201915143 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1915143117
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 01 2020, @05:04AM
See Dr. Carl Hart. These studies are useless piles of rubish that do only one thing, perpetuate the problem through a fundamental lack of understanding. They tried using heroin as a substitute for morphine; it didn't work. They tried creating dextromethorphan and SSRI's to sidestep the addictive nature of sedatives and opiates; didn't work (SSRI's among other bad side affects can lead to suicide or mass shootings, and dextromethorphan is it's own interesting drug).
If you want to reduce or eliminate the danger inherent to opiate use, set up safe injection sites, legalize nalaxone, and train people how to use it. Also, make clean needles available and clean needle disposal available to prevent infection and communicable diseases. Doing those things drastically, and if done correctly, eliminates, over-dose related deaths and blood-borne disease transmission. These are the very reasons we consider these drugs to be so dangerous; but, we refuse to do these things because, we can't let them get high. Well, guess the fuck what, most of people that feel that way are going to have a beer after work, or some wine, or do some weekend social drinking, and just don't happen to socially approve of other forms of relaxation through intoxication.
It is that simple. The drug is a problem because of the inherent dangers involved in using it; so, let's start eliminating the dangers. It's like literally writing legislation that prevents cars from having seatbelts and airbags because the people in the cars owned them and drove them in the first place.