Drugs of Abuse

An understanding of how drugs are transferred between mother and fetus during the gestational period is an important medical issue of relevance to both therapeutic drugs and drugs of abuse. Though there are several in vitro and in vivo methods to examine this issue, all have limitations. Furthermore, ethical and safety considerations generally preclude such studies in pregnant humans. PET and appropriately labeled compounds have the ability to provide information on both maternal-fetal drug pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. We present here a nonhuman primate animal model and the methodology for combining PET and MRI to identify fetal organs and to measure maternal and fetal isotope distribution using (18)F-FDG and a whole-body imaging protocol to demonstrate proof-of-principle.

Background: Saliva is an alternative biologic matrix for drugs-of-abuse testing that offers the advantages of noninvasive, rapid, and easy sampling. We studied the excretion profile of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphet- amine (MDMA) and its metabolites in both saliva and plasma, as well the effect of the drug on salivary pH. Methods: Saliva and plasma samples were obtained from eight healthy MDMA consumers after

Prescription drugs have become a major category of abused substances, and there is evidence that the prevalence of prescription drug abuse may soon overtake that of illicit drugs. Study of prescription drugs has been hampered by vague terminology, since prescription drugs are only separated from other drugs of abuse by social and legal constructs. Reviewed herein is published literature on the abuse of four major categories of abused prescription drugs: sedative-hypnotics, stimulants, anabolic steroids, and anticholinergics. The review emphasizes evidence regarding the effects of these drugs on neural systems. Other abused prescription drugs that fall outside of the major categories are also briefly addressed.

In 2013, illegal drug use was responsible for 1.8% of years of life lost in the European Union, alcohol was responsible for 8.2% and tobacco for 18.2%, imposing economic burdens in excess of 2.5% of GDP. No single European country has optimal governance structures for reducing the harm done by nicotine, illegal drugs and alcohol, and existing ones are poorly designed, fragmented, and sometimes cause harm. Reporting the main science and policy conclusions of a transdisciplinary five-year analysis of the place of addictions in Europe, researchers from 67 scientific institutions addressed these problems by reframing an understanding of addictions.  A new paradigm needs to account for evolutionary evidence which suggests that humans are biologically predisposed to seek out drugs, and that, today, individuals face availability of high drug doses, consequently increasing the risk of harm.  New definitions need to acknowledge that the defining element of addictive drugs is 'heavy use o...

This study investigated the prevalence of drug abuse among pre-service teachers in colleges of education in Oyo Metropolis. It probed into the causes, the effects and the perception of the respondents to the issue of drug abuse with a view to ameliorating the social malady. The study employed descriptive survey research design with the use of questionnaire to collect relevant data. The population consisted of 5,100 students in the two colleges of education located in the metropolis. Stratified random sampling technique was used to draw 920 study participants. Drug Abuse Questionnaire was the main researcher-made instrument for collection of relevant data. The reliability of the test instrument was ensured through test-retest method. The coefficient yielded after the data was subjected to Pearson Product Moment Correlation Analysis, was 0.81. Descriptive statistics and t-test were used to analyse the data collected. Findings of the study indicated that, academic stress, peer group pressure, desire to run away from reality of failure amongst others were the reasons for drug abuse. In addition, male students have positive attitude towards drug addiction than the female counterparts. In view of the findings, the study recommended that, school administrators should make counseling units highly functional to assist students in their various social problems.

Conducting toxicology on post-mortem specimens provides a number of very significant challenges to the scientist. The range of additional specimens include tissues such as decomposing blood and other tissues, hair, muscle, fat, lung, and even larvae feeding on the host require special techniques to isolate a foreign substance and allow detection without interference from the matrix. A number of drugs

This paper is the 28th consecutive installment of the annual review of research concerning the endogenous opioid system, now spanning over a quarter-century of research. It summarizes papers published during 2005 that studied the behavioral effects of molecular, pharmacological and genetic manipulation of opioid peptides, opioid receptors, opioid agonists and opioid antagonists. The particular topics that continue to be covered

The nucleus accumbens, a site within the ventral striatum, plays a prominent role in mediating the reinforcing effects of drugs of abuse, food, sex, and other addictions. Indeed, it is generally believed that this structure mandates motivated behaviors such as eating, drinking, and sexual activity, which are elicited by natural rewards and other strong incentive stimuli. This article focuses on sex addiction, but we hypothesize that there is a common underlying mechanism of action for the powerful effects that all addictions have on human motivation. That is, biological drives may have common molecular genetic antecedents, which if impaired, lead to aberrant behaviors. Based on abundant scientific support, we further hypothesize that dopaminergic genes, and possibly other candidate neurotransmitter-related gene polymorphisms, affect both hedonic and anhedonic behavioral outcomes. Genotyping studies already have linked gene polymorphic associations with alcohol and drug addictions and obesity, and we anticipate that future genotyping studies of sex addicts will provide evidence for polymorphic associations with specific clustering of sexual typologies based on clinical instrument assessments. We recommend that scientists and clinicians embark on research coupling the use of neuroimaging tools with dopaminergic agonistic agents to target specific gene polymorphisms systematically for normalizing hyper- or hypo-sexual behaviors.

Abuse of psychoactive substances can lead to drug addiction. In animals, addiction is best modeled by drug self-administration paradigms. It has been proposed that the crucial common denominator for the development of drug addiction is the ability of drugs of abuse to increase extracellular concentrations of dopamine in the nucleus accumbens (NAcc). Studies using in vivo microdialysis and chronoamperometry in the behaving animal have demonstrated that drugs of abuse increase tonic dopamine concentrations in the NAcc. However, it is known that dopamine neurons respond to reward-related stimuli on a subsecond timescale. Thus, it is necessary to collect neurochemical information with this level of temporal resolution, as achieved with in vivo fast-scan cyclic voltammetry (FSCV), to fully understand the role of phasic dopamine release in normal behavior and drug addiction. We review studies that investigated the effects of drugs of abuse on NAcc dopamine levels in freely moving animals using in vivo microdialysis, chronoamperometry, and FSCV. After a brief introduction of dopamine signal transduction and anatomy and a section on current theories on the role of dopamine in natural goal-directed behavior, a discussion of techniques for the in vivo assessment of extracellular dopamine in behaving animals is presented. Then, we review studies using these techniques to investigate changes in phasic and tonic dopamine signaling in the NAcc during (1) response-dependent and -independent administration of abused drugs, (2) the presentation of drug-conditioned stimuli and operant behavior in self-administration paradigms, (3) drug withdrawal, and (4) cue-induced reinstatement of drug seeking. These results are then integrated with current ideas on the role of dopamine in addiction with an emphasis on a model illustrating phasic and tonic NAcc dopamine signaling during different stages of drug addiction. This model predicts that phasic dopamine release in response to drug-related stimuli will be enhanced over stimuli associated with natural reinforcers, which may result in aberrant goal-directed behaviors contributing to drug addiction.

The role of parents in helping their children to face the adolescence challenges and specifically the challenge of drug abuse cannot be underestimated; however, the extent to which parenting styles predetermine secondary school students’ involvement in drugs is not well understood. This study investigated parenting styles, as predictors of drug abuse among public secondary school students in Embu County, Kenya. A population of 8820 (4886 girls and 3934 boys) form two and three students distributed in 132 public secondary schools in Embu county was targeted. Purposive sampling was used to select a sample of 15 schools which had reported more cases of drug abuse for the last three years in the county. Stratified random sampling and systematic random sampling were used to select 399 participants (221 girls and 178 boys). Purposive sampling was used to select 15 Guidance and counseling teachers and 70 secondary school dropouts from the 15 schools. Reliability for the parenting styles questionnaires and risky behaviours were calculated an average Cronbach alpha (α) of α = 0.82 for parenting styles questionnaires was reported and for risky behaviours α = 0.78. Multiple linear regression showed that parenting styles significantly predict drug abuse among secondary school students, and that parenting styles accounts for, 64.4% (R2=0.644, p< 0.05) of students’ drug abuse, The study, therefore, recommends that the government through the Ministry of Education should  train  the teacher counselor, to identify and counsel drug abusing students and train parents on how to handle drug abusive children