Search results for "Drugs of abuse"
showing 10 items of 21 documents
Social defeat stress: mechanisms underlying the increase in rewarding effects of drugs of abuse
2018
Social interaction is known to be the main source of stress in human beings, which explains the translational importance of this research in animals. Evidence reported over the last decade has revealed that, when exposed to social defeat experiences (brief episodes of social confrontations during adolescence and adulthood), the rodent brain undergoes remodeling and functional modifications, which in turn lead to an increase in the rewarding and reinstating effects of different drugs of abuse. The mechanisms by which social stress cause changes in the brain and behavior are unknown, and so the objective of this review is to contemplate how social defeat stress induces longlasting consequence…
Unexpected variation of the codeine/morphine ratio following fatal heroin overdose.
2014
Postmortem samples from 14 cases of suspected heroin overdose were subjected to a preliminary systematic toxicological analysis in order to highlight the presence of unknown exogenous compounds (e.g., drugs of abuse, alcohol) that may have played a role in the mechanism of death. This analysis unveiled histories of poly-drug use in seven of the cases under investigation. Moreover, the concentrations of morphine and codeine in the brain were also investigated, and the results were compared with the data obtained from the blood specimens. The concentration of morphine in blood ranged from 33 to 688 ng/mL, while the concentration of codeine ranged from 0 to 193 ng/mL. However, in the brain, th…
Identification of biomarkers in wastewater-based epidemiology: Main approaches and analytical methods
2021
Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) has become popular to estimate the use of drugs of abuse and recently to establish the incidence of CoVID 19 in large cities. However, its possibilities have been expanded recently as a technique that allows to establish a fingerprint of the characteristics of a city, such as state of health/disease, healthy/unhealthy living habits, exposure to different types of contaminants, etc. with respect to other cities. This has been thanks to the identification of human biomarkers as well as to the fingerprinting and profiling of the characteristics of the wastewater catchment that determine these circumstances. The purpose of this review is to analyze the differ…
Análisis de aguas residuales con fines epidemiológicos: aplicaciones a la estimación del consumo de sustancias de abuso y en salud pública en general…
2018
[ES] En este artículo se presenta la metodología de análisis de aguas residuales con fines epidemiológicos (wastewater-based epidemiology, WBE) y su potencial para abordar diversos aspectos relacionados con la salud pública. Esta metodología permite obtener datos a una escala temporal y espacial relativamente pequeña (típicamente datos diarios-semanales sobre un municipio) de hábitos de consumo de sustancias de abuso, ilegales (como la cocaína o el cannabis) o legales (como el alcohol) a través de la determinación de biomarcadores de consumo (el compuesto original no metabolizado o alguno de sus metabolitos) en el agua residual. Aparte de discutir los fundamentos, ventajas y limitaciones de…
Common Neural Mechanisms of Palatable Food Intake and Drug Abuse: Knowledge Obtained with Animal Models
2019
Eating is necessary for survival, but it is also one of the great pleasures enjoyed by human beings. Research to date shows that palatable food can be rewarding in a similar way to drugs of abuse, indicating considerable comorbidity between eating disorders and substance-use disorders. Analysis of the common characteristics of both types of disorder has led to a new wave of studies proposing a Gateway Theory of food as a vulnerability factor that modulates the development of drug addiction. The homeostatic and hedonic mechanisms of feeding overlap with some of the mechanisms implicated in drug abuse and their interaction plays a crucial role in the development of drug addiction. Studies in…
Preliminary Practical Findings on Drug Monitoring by a Transcutaneous Collection Device
1996
A noninvasive and nonocclusive skin patch (Sudormed™) was investigated for the systematic collection of drugs of abuse over a period of several days. First, the applicability and user friendliness were tested by volunteers. The permeability of the polyurethane dressing from the outside to the inside for an aqueous solution was shown by incubating the outside layer with Rhodamine B. No fluorescence could be detected in the cotton pad beneath. A single dose experiment using theophylline as a model compound showed that there was a delay in time before the substance could be determined in the pad. The drug content decreased with increasing time of patch application. When eight volunteers partic…
Perspiration versus saliva--basic aspects concerning their use in roadside drug testing.
1999
Various aspects concerning the practical application and forensic interpretation of data obtained by saliva drug testing and drug monitoring from the skin surface are discussed. Basic information on the composition of saliva and skin secretions and their particular transport mechanisms, as far as known, are given. For drugs of abuse secretion into saliva is suggested to be by passive diffusion and to depend on lipid solubility, pKa, plasma protein binding and on the pH of saliva. Drug molecules from blood are considered to reach the skin surface by various routes such as by sweat and sebum as well as by inter- and/or transcellular diffusion. The role of the stratum corneum as a temporary dr…
Impact of adolescent methamphetamine use on social cognition: A human-mice reverse translation study.
2021
Background: Methamphetamine dependence is associated with social cognition deficits that may underpin negative social outcomes. However, there are considerable inter-individual differences in social cognition within people with methamphetamine dependence, with age of onset of methamphetamine use being a potential contributing factor. Materials and methods: We conducted two sequential studies examining the link between age of onset of methamphetamine use (adolescence versus young adulthood) and performance in social cognition tests: (1) a human cross-sectional study in 95 participants with methamphetamine dependence varying in age of onset (38 with adolescent onset and 57 with adult onset) a…
Advances in the analysis of legal and illegal drugs in the aquatic environment
2013
We review the current methods developed for the analysis of legal and illegal drugs (LIDs) and their metabolites in environmental samples. We discuss the advantages and the pitfalls of multi-class methods with emphasis on new strategies for sample preparation and recent technical developments. Finally, we present the applicability of these methods to the analysis of LIDs in protected environmental areas.
The embodiment of wastewater data for the estimation of illicit drug consumption in Spain
2021
Data obtained from wastewater analysis can provide rapid and complementary insights in illicit drug consumption at community level. Within Europe, Spain is an important country of transit of both cocaine and cannabis. The quantity of seized drugs and prevalence of their use rank Spain at the top of Europe. Hence, the implementation of a wastewater monitoring program at national level would help to get better understanding of spatial differences and trends in use of illicit drugs. In this study, a national wastewater campaign was performed for the first time to get more insight on the consumption of illicit drugs within Spain. The 13 Spanish cities monitored cover approximately 6 million inh…