Thursday, January 29, 2009

Some Facts About Oxycontin

OxyContin abuse started in rural Maine, Ketucky, Virginia, and West Virginia. OxyContin is a legal prescription pain killer used for treatment of moderate to severe pain. Street names for OxyContin include: Hillbill Heroin, Oxy, and Oxycotton.

The abusers of OxyContin typically participate in doctor shopping, faking injury, and prescription fraud in order to keep thier supply. There is a black market for OxyContin in which the drug is brought illegally into the country.

Oxycontin is available in tablet form. The abusers of OxyContin break down the tablets in order to cause a faster release of the drug.

The tablets are chewed, liguified and injected, and crused and smoked. Like many other painkillers the body quickly builds up a tolerance to OxyContin. Causing the user to take more and more of the drug in order to achieve a desired effect, this leads to drug addiction and the risk of drug overdose. An overdose will cause severe respiratroy depression that can lead to death.

Stopping OxyContin use will cause withdrawal symptoms within the individual. It is suggested that the use of OxyContin should be stepped down or an individual weaned off of the drug. Withdrawal symptoms include aggitation, pain, diarrhea, vomiting, cold flashes, and leg muscle twitching.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Brain Changes May Be Caused By Oxycontin Abuse

According to US researchers, adolescent brains exposed to the painkiller Oxycontin can sustain lifelong and permanent changes in their reward system.

Mary Jeanne Kreek of Rockefeller University compared levels of the chemical dopamine in adolescent and adult mice in response to increasing doses of the painkiller.

First author Yong Zhang, a research associate, and colleagues found that adolescent mice self-administered Oxycontin less frequently than adults, suggesting that adolescents were more sensitive to its rewarding effects.

The adolescent mice, when re-exposed to a low dose of the drug as adults, also had significantly higher dopamine levels in the brain's reward center compared to adult mice newly exposed to the drug, the researchers said.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

OxyContin Addiction or Dependence?

Pain patients may sometimes develop a physical dependence during treatment with opioids such as OxyContin. This is not an addiction. A gradual decrease of the medication dose over time, as the pain is resolving, brings the former pain patient to a drug-free state without any craving for repeated doses of the drug.

This is the difference between the formerly-dependent pain patient who has now been withdrawn from medication and the addicted patient:

The patient addicted to OxyContin continues to have a severe and uncontrollable craving that almost always leads to eventual relapse in the absence of adequate treatment. It is this uncontrollable craving for another “rush” of the drug that differentiates the “detoxified” but opiate addicted patient from the former-pain patient.

Theoretically, an OxyContin abuser might develop a physical dependence, but obtain treatment in the first few months of abuse, before becoming addicted. In this case, supervised withdrawal (detoxification) followed by a few months of abstinence-oriented treatment might be sufficient for the non-addicted patient who abuses OxyContin.

If, however, this patient subsequently relapses to OxyContin abuse, then that would support a diagnosis of opioid addiction. After several relapses to opioid abuse, it becomes clear that a patient will require long-term treatment for the opioid addiction.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Oxycontin Abuse Continue To Rise

The Federal Drug Administration approved OxyContin in late 1995 and the drug was put on the market in early 1996. Between that time and 2000, prescriptions for the drug have increased by 2,000 percent. Abusers discovered that they could get a powerful heroin-like high by crushing the pill and injecting, swallowing and inhaling the powder.

Abuse of OxyContin, the nation's best selling prescription painkiller, began in Maine and Virginia, spread to Kentucky and West Virginia and moved into Ohio about two years ago. Narcotics and health officials now say that OxyContin has become the pill of choice for many addicts. OxyContin is designed to treat moderate to severe, chronic pain. The drug's classification requires patients to present a written prescription to a pharmacist. Its time-released form allows patients to take it once every 12 hours.

Abuse of the drug has led to higher rate of overdose deaths and narcotics crimes. Oxycodone, the active ingredient in OxyContin, was detected in 56 cases where toxicology tests were performed in 2000 and 2001. Of those people, 23 took fatal doses of the drug.

When will this problem ever end? Is there even a solution in the near future?

Monday, January 19, 2009

Mechanism of Oxycontin

The chemical structure of oxycodone is the methylether of oxymorphone: 3-Methyl-oxymorphone. OxyContin is an opiate agonist and these opiate agonists provide pain relief by acting on opioid receptors in the spinal cord, brain, and possibly in the tissues directly. Opioids, natural or synthetic classes of drugs that act like morphine, are the most effective pain relievers available today. Oxycodone is a central nervous system depressant. This means that it acts by stimulating the opioid receptors found in the central nervous system that activate responses ranging from analgesia-pain relief to respiratory depression to euphoria. The trouble is that people who take the drug repeatedly can develop a tolerance or resistance to the drug's effects, but overdose of oxycodone could be fatal in a person never exposed to oxycodone or another opioid. Good thing about it is that most individuals who are prescribed OxyContin will not become addicted, although they may become dependent on the drug and will experience withdrawal symptoms when they stop using it.

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Important Things You Need To Know About Oxycontin

Oxycontin may be habit-forming and should be used only by the person it was prescribed for. Oxycontin should never be shared with another person, especially someone who has a history of drug abuse or addiction. Keep the medication in a secure place where others cannot get to it.

Do not drink alcohol while you are taking oxycontin. Dangerous side effects or death can occur when alcohol is combined with a narcotic pain medicine. Check your food and medicine labels to be sure these products do not contain alcohol.

Never take more than your prescribed dose of oxycontin. Tell your doctor if the medicine seems to stop working as well in relieving your pain.

Oxycontin can cause side effects that may impair your thinking or reactions. Be careful if you drive or do anything that requires you to be awake and alert.

Do not stop using oxycontin suddenly, or you could have unpleasant withdrawal symptoms. Talk to your doctor about how to avoid withdrawal symptoms when stopping the medication.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Oxycontin Fast Facts

Overview: You'd have had to be way out in the boonies to have missed the media buzz about OxyContin lately. And ironically, if that's where you were, that's one of the places you'd have been most likely to bump into the potent new painkiller. Its early user base in rural areas did earn it the made-for-media nickname of "hillbilly heroin," but OxyContin turned out to be anything but a regional problem or a media myth, and users in the real world quickly proved it can cause the same type of abuse and addiction it was designed to prevent.

Clearly, a fresh look at OxyContin is overdue. That's especially true since, like most drugs, OxyContin isn't all good or bad. Still, its darker, down side can be very dark and very down -- and very hard to handle.

Street Names: OC, Oxy, cotton, killer.

Appearance: Tablets/caplets with "OC" em-bossed on one side, "10," "20," "40," "80" or "160" on the other. (Numbers reflect mg dosage.)

Medical Uses: OxyContin is used to reduce chronic pain, especially the pain associated with severe injuries, fractures, and cancer.

Actions/Effects: OxyContin differs from other forms of oxycodone (like Vicodin® and Percodan®) in only one way: The oxycodone in OxyContin is a "sustained-release" form of the drug, which means that OxyContin tablets pack higher doses of oxycodone than would otherwise be safe, since the drug is designed to be released more slowly. But users quickly discovered that, by simply chewing the tablets or crushing and sniffing them, all the oxycodone in a tablet can be released at once, in a huge, heroin-like rush of oblivion. And a new drug problem was born.

Risks: Defeating its sustained-release feature eliminates OxyContin's safety margin, making it as addictive and deadly as other narcotics. Oxy abusers found out about that first, too, faster than the media could say, "hillbilly heroin."

Trends: Although OxyContin has only been available as a prescription drug since 1996, it quickly found favor on the street. According to national surveys, 3.5 million Americans 12 and older admitted nonmedical use by 2005, while the number of high school seniors reporting use in the previous year stood at 4.3 percent in 2006.

Demographics: Since OxyContin is a form of oxycodone, its impact can best be seen by contrasting oxycodone-related emergency room admissions before and after its 1996 introduction. According to the Drug Abuse Warning Network, the number of such admissions jumped from 3,290 in 1996 to 42,810 in 2005.

Friday, January 09, 2009

Morphine Dependency Blocked By Single Genetic Change

Morphine’s serious side effect as a pain killer – its potential to create dependency – has been almost completely eliminated in research with mice by genetically modifying a single trait on the surface of neurons. The study scientists think a drug can be developed to similarly block dependency.

The scientists were led by Jennifer Whistler, PhD, an investigator in the UCSF-affiliated Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center, and associate professor of neurology at UCSF.

Millions of people in the U.S. are given the opiate drug morphine for extreme pain caused by cancer, surgery, nerve damage and other conditions. It remains the pain killer of choice for many types of short-term pain, such as surgery, according to Whistler, but it is less useful for the treatment of chronic pain because its effectiveness decreases with continued use in a process called tolerance. As a consequence, an increasingly larger dose is required to treat the pain, thereby increasing the chance of addiction.

The body’s natural pain killers, such as endorphins, ease pain by first binding to receptors on the surface of neurons. The receptors cycle on and off “like a light switch,” Whistler says, regulating the intake of endorphin. This crucial control is absent when the neurons encounter morphine. The researchers’ strategy in their study was to try to trick neurons into responding to morphine in the more regulated way.

Strong evidence suggests that the natural on-off cycling occurs because the endorphin receptor withdraws from the cell surface, toward the cell’s interior, Whistler says. The migration from the cell surface is called endocytosis.
When the neuron receptors encounter morphine the light switch is broken, and the nervous system responds by becoming more tolerant of the drug, making the recipient more dependent on the drug.

To demonstrate their hunch that morphine’s unwanted effects were caused by the failure of its receptor to withdraw from the cell surface, the researchers genetically engineered mice with a single difference from normal mice: Receptors that encounter morphine in these mice can undergo endocytosis, as they normally do in the presence of endorphins. The researchers showed that with this single change, morphine remained an excellent pain killer without inducing tolerance and dependence.

“As more pain medications are being removed from the market, new strategies to overcome chronic pain become crucial,” Whistler says. “If new opiate drugs can be developed with morphine’s pain killing properties but also with the ability to promote endocytosis, they could be less likely to cause the serious side effects of tolerance and dependence.”

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

More Reasons Not To Take Oxycontin

We already know a lot of side effects related to taking oxycontin but it seems that we just keep finding more. So, here's another list of side effects just for you.

Taking Habit Forming Drugs
Misuse or Excessive Use of Drugs
Epileptic Seizure
Slow Heartbeat
Abnormal Heart Rhythm
Abnormally Low Blood Pressure
Asthma Attack
Significant Decrease in Lung Function
Chronic Lung or Breathing Passage Problem
Stomach or Intestinal Tract Operation
Inflammatory Bowel Disease
Liver Problems
Disease of the Gallbladder
Spasm of a Bile Duct Tract
Urinary Tract Surgery
Kidney Disease
Narrowing of the Tube that Empties Urine From the Bladder, Enlarged Prostate
Severe Bloody Diarrhea from Antibiotics
Lesion of Brain
Abnormal Nervous System
Function Affecting Mental Alertness
Head Injury
Toxin from Microorganisms causing Diarrhea
Pressure Within the Skull
Underactive Thyroid
Intense Abdominal Pain
Addison's Disease
Mood Changes
Having Thoughts of Suicide

Monday, January 05, 2009

Large Family Study Pinpoints Genetic Linkage In Drug Addiction

Based on data obtained from one of the largest family sets of its kind, Yale School of Medicine researchers have identified a genetic linkage for dependence on drugs such as heroin, morphine and oxycontin.

The lead author, Joel Gelernter, M.D., professor in the Department of Psychiatry, said the researchers recruited a sample of 393 small families, most with at least two individuals with opioid dependence. They then searched genetic signposts throughout the entire genome in an effort to identify markers that, within the same family, would show that individuals who share the illness also share marker alleles, or gene variants.

This information allowed the team to identify where genes influencing opioid dependence are located. Gelernter said the researchers found evidence of gene linkage for opioid dependence. They also found strong evidence of linkage in the family groups for the symptom cluster traits characterized by dependence on substances other than opioids, specifically, alcohol, cocaine and tobacco.

"These results provide a first basis to identify genes for opioid dependence from a genome-wide investigation," Gelernter said. "Research in the laboratory now is focused on finding specific genes that modify risk for opioid dependence."

He said that although environment plays a significant role, it is well established that substance dependence risk is also genetically influenced. Understanding the genetic factors that influence opioid dependence risk would represent major progress toward understanding the basic biology of the disorder.

"Once specific genes that increase or decrease risk are known, we will be in a better position to figure out exactly what the environmental factors might be and, perhaps, how they can be modified to protect people who are genetically at risk," Gelernter said.