| The global spread of drug abuse has major public health implications concurrent with the prevalence of AIDS, hepatitis, venereal diseases, and other diseases through drug injection and sexual risk-taking behavior, accompanied by a series of social problems. Data from WHO showed that more than 50 million people has suffered from drug dependence. The total number was estimated to exceed 100 million at present. Over 100 thousand people died of drug dependence. According to the latest statistics, the number of registered drug users in China exceeds one million, increasing by ten thousands or more annually, keeping an increasing trend, causing inestimable damage to national economic development, people's quality and social stability.In China, opioid abuse is dominant. Long-term opioid use leads to physical and psychological dependence. Physical dependence results from a large amount of exogenous opioid compound use hindering the action of endogenous opioid peptide. Meanwhile, opioid receptors get quickly tolerated to exogenous opioid compound. The body requires more and more drugs and concomitantly builds up a pathologic stability, which is hardly maintained when the drug is discontinued, manifested by a drug class specific withdrawal syndrome. Opioids are so strongly addictive that their use in clinic practice are limited. Therefore, scientists focus on the mechanism of opiate addiction to find a new pharmacotherapy.The mechanism of morphine dependence is complicated and still unclear. Although opioid receptors has been discovered in brain for more than ten years, researchers failed to elucidate the cause of morphine dependence by studying the density, number and variety of affinity of opioid receptors. Recently, it is discovered that drug dependence is a kind of long-term... |
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