Pharmacology, biochemistry, and behavior
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Pharmacol. Biochem. Behav. · Nov 2009
Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical TrialMarkers of abuse liability of short- vs long-acting opioids in chronic pain patients: a randomized cross-over trial.
Abuse liability is thought to possibly be lower in long- than in short-acting opioids because lower peak serum levels may be less likely to induce psychoactive effects. ⋯ Using several markers of abuse liability, long-acting opioids do not have lower abuse potential than do short-acting opioids or placebo. Although cue reactivity did not differ among the conditions, uniformly high results in these patients suggest that it may have some value as a component of abuse liability testing.
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Pharmacol. Biochem. Behav. · Nov 2009
Neuroprotective profile of dextromethorphan in an experimental model of penetrating ballistic-like brain injury.
Dextromethorphan (DM) has been well-characterized as a neuroprotective agent in experimental models of CNS injury. The goal of this study was to determine the neuroprotective profile of DM in a military-relevant model of penetrating ballistic-like brain injury (PBBI). In an acute (3 day) dose-response study, anesthetized male Sprague-Dawley rats were exposed to a unilateral frontal PBBI with DM (0.156-10 mg/kg) or vehicle delivered as an i.v. bolus from 30 min to 48 h post-injury. ⋯ However, more rapid recovery (24 h) was observed on this task when the bolus injections were combined with the 6-h infusion. Moreover, the DM bolus/infusion treatment regimen resulted in a significant (76%) improvement in cognitive performance in a novel object recognition (NOR) task at 7 days post-injury. Although post-injury administration of DM (all doses) failed to reduce core lesion size, the maximum dose of DM (10 mg/kg) was effective in reducing silver-stained axonal fiber degeneration in the cortical regions adjacent to the injury.