Sensing morphine

In the strict sense, opiates are drugs which are derived from opium and include the natural products morphine, codeine, thebaine and many semi-synthetic congeners derived from them. In the wider sense, opiates are morphine-like drugs with non-peptidic structures. The old term opiates is now more and more replaced by the term opioids which applies to any substance, whether endogenous or synthetic, pqrtidic or non-peptidic, that produces morphine-like effects through an action on opioid receptors. 

Although placebo effects are generally referred to as nonspecific, there is also a sense in which they are very specific. The effect of the placebo is specific to the beliefs that people have about the substance they are ingesting. Placebo morphine, for example, reduces pain, whereas placebo antidepressants reduce depression. Even the side effects that people report when given a placebo tend to be the same side effects that are produced by the real drug.12 In other words, the effect of a placebo is specific to the effect that the person expects it to have. When given placebo stimulants like decaffeinated coffee (presented as regular coffee), people feel more alert, and their heart rate and... 

Before delving into ways the living world uses its special chemicals, we should note that these compounds touch our own lives in important ways. For millennia, humans have been borrowing natural chemicals for their own purposes, most often as drugs. Our oldest medicine is opium, which we prepare from the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) today much as Mediterranean peoples did four thousand years ago. Just as we do, these early communities valued opium for its ability to kill pain and impart a sense of well-being. The principal constituent responsible for these effects is a chemical compound called morphine, which remains unsurpassed in its ability to control severe pain. In poppies, morphine s toxicity and bitterness presumably repel herbivores looking for a tasty meal. 

Morphine has anxiolytic effects in humans. Users typically experience a sense of contentment and complacency. This effect is most likely mediated by opioid receptors in limbic structures such as the amygdala (File and Rodgers 1979). 

The word analgesia is from the Greek an-, meaning not or without, + algesis, sense of pain. Codeine is more potent than other pain-relieving medications, such as aspirin and ibupro-fen, but less potent than the really serious painkillers—morphine, oxycodone -I- acetaminophen, hydromorphone. When a... 

Morphine also produces a sense of anxiety, known as dysphoria. The morphine produces euphoria (which makes morphine as one of the main drugs of abuse) and analgesia by acting on higher centres and spinal cord. 

The escape from the tautology of one effect-one cause is possible if the hypothesized cause can be demonstrated to have an independent existence. After we have laughed at Molifere s Argan, remember that opium does in plain fact contain a dormitive virtue whose nature is to stupefy the senses. Its name is morphine, and it has been isolated and its composition determined. Argans tautology has been broken by pushing the cause back another step to experiential reality. 

Or they may be grouped according to the genus of their plant source (morphine and codeine, Section 23-2, are examples of opium alkaloids), or by their physiological effects (antimicrobials, antibiotics, analgesics), or by similarities in the route by which they are synthesized by the organism (biosynthesis). The structural and biosynthetic classifications make the most sense to the chemist and is the organization chosen here. 

An alkaloid pain reliever, morphine, is an often abused drug. Chronoampero-metric MIP chemosensors have been devised for its determination [204]. In these chemosensors, a poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) film was deposited by electropolymerization in ACN onto an ITO electrode in the presence of the morphine template to serve as the sensing element [204], Electrocatalytic current of morphine oxidation has been measured at 0.75 V vs AglAgCllKClsat (pH = 5.0) as the detection signal. A linear dependence of the measured steady-state current on the morphine concentration extended over the range of 0.1-1 mM with LOD for morphine of 0.2 mM. The chemosensor successfully discriminated morphine and its codeine analogue. Furthermore, a microfluidic MIP system combined with the chronoamperometric transduction has been devised for the determination of morphine [182] with appreciable LOD for morphine of 0.01 mM at a flow rate of 92.3 pL min-1 (Table 6). 

How does aspirin differ from morphine Aspirin has three main beneficial effects in your body. It blocks pain in the mild-to-moderate range, and it reduces both inflammation and fever. Its effects on pain derive from its actions not on neuropeptides, such as the endogenous opiates in the brain, but on a local hormone called prostaglandin that is released at the site of bodily pain. When a cell in your body is damaged or injured, prota-glandins are rapidly synthesized and released from the injured cells. Prostaglandins help mediate pain in the injured areas. They sensitize your pain-sensing neurons to mechanical stimulation,... 

At first, George Merck merely ran the American branch of dad s export business. However, in that era of high tariffs, he figured it would make sense to start manufacturing his own supply. In 1900 he bought some 120 acres of swamps and woodland in Rahway, New Jersey, for a manufacturing plant, followed by a factory in St. Louis. Among his products were iodides, bismuths, morphine, and cocaine—the last two considered medicines at the turn of the century. 

In Sweden, phenmetrazine has been extensively abused and misused, sometimes with intravenous use. Addicts who had previously been taking morphine stated that phenmetrazine gave them a sense of well-being and overconfidence. There was a high incidence of criminal activity in phenmetrazine users whose primary objective was obtaining money for the drug. Their average doses were 3060 tablets at a time, repeated 4—5 times a day (SED-9,15). 

Many northern states, however, also had anticannabis laws as early as 1915. To the legislators of Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, and New York, a narcotic was a narcotic, whatever its name. Cannabis was considered a narcotic and therefore was accorded the same status as opium, morphine, heroin, and codeine, all of which were proscribed. Thus, when New York City s Board of Health prohibited cannabis from the city s streets in 1914, the New York Times (July 30, 1914) reported that the drag was a "narcotic [with] practically the same effect as morphine and cocaine... [and] the inclusion of cannabis indica among the drags to be sold only on prescription is only common sense. Devotees of hashish are now hardly numerous here to count, but they are likely to increase as other narcotics become harder to obtain."... 

Following a study of a large number of compounds Emde [608] concluded that the contributions of the various asymmetric centres in morphine to the total rotation are in the senses shown in [xxxvn]. 

As a result of the Harrison Act (1914), morphine came under government control and was made available only by prescription. Although morphine is addictive, heroin, a derivative of morphine, is much more addictive and induces a greater sense of euphoria that lasts for a longer time. 

Actually, of course, a sense of security has nothing whatever to do with actual safety. For example, there s nothing like a good, solid lethal dose of morphine to make a man s worries and fears ease away. A cat might well curl up comfortably on a nice, warm mass of radioactive matter, thermally content while the gamma radiation tore it to pieces. 

Opiates snch as morphine and codeine are thonght to enhance the release by nenrons of the nenrotransmitter dopamine the release of dopamine leads to a sense of enphoria. These drugs are addictive and are often abused. In general, all antipsychotic medications work by blocking dopamine receptors in the forebrain. Nicotine mimics the action of the nenrotransmitter acetylcholine at receptors having to do with the transmission of signals between antonomic nerve cells and skeletal muscle, see also Caffeine Epinephrine Methylphenidate Neurochemistry Neurotransmitters Norepinephrine. 

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