Antitussives Opium poppy

Opium alkaloids [Codeine (12), Morphine (13)] Papaver somniferum L. (opium poppy) Antitussive Narcotic analgesic... 

Noscapine is a naturally occurring product of the opium poppy. It is a benzylisoquinoline with no analgesic or other CNS effects. Its antitussive effects are weak, but it is used in combination with other agents in mixtures for cough relief. 

Papaver somniferum L. Yu Mei Ku (Opium poppy) (whole plant) Berberine, codeine, papaverine, isocorypalmine, laudanine, magnoflorine, meconine, 6-methylocodine, morphine, narcotine, pseudomorphine, rhoeadine, sanguinarine, beta-sitosterol, stigmasterol, thebaine, zanthaline.50 Antitussive, antispasmodic, analgesic, astringent, narcotic, treat chronic enteritis, diarrhea, enterorrhagia, headache, toothache, asthma. 

Another fruitful means of identifying pharmacologically active natural products has been that of folk law remedies, many of which are plant products. Typical examples include alkaloids, such as atropine (from plants of the Solanaceae family, known to the ancient Greeks) and reserpine (from Rauwolfia serpentina, the snakeroot), which is popular in India as a herbal remedy for use as a tranquilizer or antihypertensive. Other chapters in the book relate to stigmines (based on phy-sostigmine, an anticholinesterase alkaloid from the Calabar bean in West Africa) that are used to treat Alzheimer s disease (Chapter 11-12), and opioid receptor ligands (based on morphine, the most important alkaloid of the opium poppy) for pain relief and as antitussives (Chapter 11-11). 

Opium poppy Papaver somniferum L., Papaveraceae) is one of the most important medicinal plants and has been cultivated since early centuries. Opium, the dried cytoplasm of a specialized internal secretory system called the laticifer, is normally collected from the unripe capsule. It is the source for the commercial production of medicinally important alkaloids, morphine, codeine, thebaine, noscapine and papaverine [130, 131], Fig. (61). Morphine, which has strong addictive property, is still the most effective analgesic for the treatment of mortal cancer patients in modem medicine. Codeine is commonly used as an antitussive. However, field cultivation of this plant has been limited since 1953 by the United Nations Opium Conference Protocol to prevent narcotic crimes. Therefore, establishing tissue culture technique for the production of morphinan alkaloids seems to be desirable not only for medicinal purpose but also for decreasing abuse of opiates. 

Narcotoline is an opiate alkaloid chemically related to noscapine. It binds to the same receptors in the brain as noscapine to act as an antitussive and has also been used in tissue culture media. It can be obtained from the opium poppy, Papaver somnifemm. It is present at much higher levels in culinary strains (cultivars) of P. somnifemm used for poppy seed production than in high-morphine pharmaceutical strains used for opium production. 

Noscapine or narcotine (3) is a phthalideisoquinoline alkaloid from plants of the Papaveraceae family. It is an important alkaloid from the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum L.), occurring in variable quantities (level ranges from 2% to 10%) [38]. Unlike opioid morphinane drugs, noscapine lacks hypnoanalgesic, euphoric, and respiratory depressant properties. Its main therapeutic application is as oral antitussive drug, which is indicated to treat nonproductive coughs [39, 40]. 

Opium is the dried, powdered sap of the unripe seed pod of Papaver somniferum, a poppy plant indigenous to Asia minor. Theophrastus described its medical properties in the third century BC, but the Sumerians, ca BC 4000, probably perceived its utility. Arab physicians knew of the dmg, and Arab traders carried it to the Orient where it was used as a treatment for dysentery. Paracelsus is credited with repopularizing the dmg in western Europe in the early sixteenth century by formulating opium into "laudanum", which is still in use. More than 20 different alkaloids (qv) of two different classes comprise 25% of the weight of dry opium. The benzylisoquinolines, characterized by papaverine [58-74-2] (1.0%), a smooth muscle relaxant, and noscapine [128-62-1] (6.0%), an antitussive agent, do not have any analgesic effects. The phenanthrenes, the second group, are the more common and include 10% morphine (1, = R = H), 0.5% codeine [76-57-3], C gH2 N03, (1, R = H, R = CH3), and 0.2 thebaine [115-37-7], C 2H2 N03, (2). 

Morphine (5) and codeine (methylmorphine) (6), two major morphinan-type alkaloids with an isoqninoline skeleton, are extracted from opium, the dried milky sap released from the immature finits of poppies (Papaver somniferum). Morphine and codeine can interact with opioid receptors distribnted in brain tissnes and the periphery, and are most widely nsed as narcotic analgesics, with codeine also having an antitussive effect [4, 25, 32]. 

---