Trends in pharmacological sciences
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Trends Pharmacol. Sci. · Dec 2004
ReviewBad news from the brain: descending 5-HT pathways that control spinal pain processing.
The identification of opioid systems led to much of the early work on pain pharmacology being based on understanding inhibitory mechanisms of analgesia. However, hyperalgesia and allodynia are common clinical symptoms and therefore hyperexcitability must be a major component of pain. ⋯ In this article, we review evidence for facilitatory 5-HT pathways that link spinal cord and brainstem areas involved in mood and emotions. Because pain encompasses affective aspects, we suggest that these 5-HT pathways and other circuits are important in determining the levels of pain, the outcome of drug treatments and provide a mechanism whereby emotions can alter pain perception.
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Cough is an indispensable defensive reflex. Although generally beneficial, cough is also a common symptom of diseases such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer. ⋯ In this article, the pathophysiological mechanisms of cough and the implications of this research for the development of novel antitussive drugs will be discussed. A poster depicting the pharmacology of cough is available online and in print as to this article.
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Trends Pharmacol. Sci. · Sep 2004
Review Historical ArticleTechniques: Bioprospecting historical herbal texts by hunting for new leads in old tomes.
Ethnobotany has led to the identification of novel pharmacological agents but many challenges to using ethnobotany as a research tool remain. In particular, the loss of traditional knowledge together with the advent of high-throughput screening has made ethnobotanical techniques laborious and potentially unnecessary. ⋯ The methodology for extracting useful information contained within these resources had been cumbersome and consuming. However, the application of new bioinformatics data-mining systems to herbal texts holds great promise for identifying novel pharmacotherapeutic leads for bioactive compounds.
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Trends Pharmacol. Sci. · Dec 2003
ReviewOpioid hyperalgesia and tolerance versus 5-HT1A receptor-mediated inverse tolerance.
In addition to analgesia, opioids also produce paradoxical hyperalgesic effects following acute and chronic treatment. In this article, we review the occurrence of this hyperalgesia under several conditions, and discuss the potential mechanisms and clinical implications. We also review recent evidence that paradoxical analgesia and inverse tolerance induced by stimulation of 5-HT(1A) receptors, which is a mirror image of opioid-induced hyperalgesia and tolerance, might achieve clinically significant analgesia in chronic pain.
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Paracetamol is the most common substance involved in self-poisoning in the UK. The main advances made over the past five years in the management of early paracetamol poisoning, identification of risk factors for paracetamol poisoning, understanding of the mechanisms and management of late paracetamol poisoning and issues concerning the prevention of paracetamol poisoning are discussed.