Anti-nausea drug may combat opiate addiction
2/20/2009
Top Stories
- Gene therapy edges towards commercial reality The tale of two biotech companies suggests a tricky road ahead.
- Clean living could cut one third of common cancers Healthier living could prevent about one third of the most common cancers in rich countries
- Anti-nausea drug may combat opiate addiction in people addicted to morphine, oxycodone, and other opiate drugs
- Fertility Treatments Unlikely to Raise Ovarian Cancer Risk women taking fertility drugs in order to become pregnant have not had definitive evidence that such ...
- Depression risk increased among cancer patients People who have been diagnosed with cancer are at greater risk of being hospitalized with depression
- Cold's "family tree" may lead to cure: study Researchers who mapped the DNA of more than 100 different cold viruses
- Aspirin reduces risk of colon polyps recurring For people with a history of colorectal polyps or cancer, taking aspirin is an effective way to redu...
- A Smoker is More Likely To Quit Smoking If There Are Pets A large number of pet owners who smoke would consider trying to quit for the health of their beloved...
- Multivitamins may not thwart cancer, heart disease Millions of people take a multivitamin in the hopes of averting disease, but the supplements
- Gene therapy promising for rheumatoid arthritis Researchers have successfully used gene therapy to substantially reduce joint pain in two patients w...
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Treatment with the drug ondansetron may lessen the symptoms of withdrawal in people addicted to morphine, oxycodone, and other opiate drugs, according to new research.
Dr. J. David Clark at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, and colleagues studied whether ondansetron -- a drug usually used to treat nausea and vomiting caused by chemotherapy -- would ease opiate withdrawal in mice and humans. Their findings are published in the journal Pharmacogenetics and Genomics.
"One dimension of addiction is physical dependence, which can be modeled in rodents," the researchers explain. "The jumping behavior displayed by morphine-dependent mice after administration of (the anti-opiate drug naloxone) is a commonly used measure of physical dependence."
Clark's group treated mice for 4 days with increasing doses of morphine. Then the mice were given naloxone, and the researchers counted how many times the animals jumped in 15 minutes as a measure of physical dependence.
Treatment of the mice with ondansetron significantly reduced the jumping that was associated with morphine withdrawal, the report indicates.
The researchers next conducted a study in humans. Eight healthy male volunteers were pretreated with inactive "placebo" or ondansetron before receiving morphine followed by naloxone. Symptoms of withdrawal were significantly reduced in subjects given ondansetron.
"Although a patient receiving chronic opioid medications may not develop addiction, the physical dependence, tolerance and (increased pain sensitivity) that can develop may ... complicate ongoing patient management," Clark's group writes.
They conclude that treatment with drugs like ondansetron "may provide part of the solution to significant public health problems associated with opioid use."
© Reuters 2006. All rights reserved. Users may download and print extracts of content from this website for their own personal and non-commercial use only. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.