Ricerc@Sapienza

Objectives: Our group recorded the characteristic of oro-dental health among a group of drug addicts in recovery treatment with methadone, and it evaluated the changes related to the withdrawal therapy. Methodology: A sample of 50 drug addicts in treatment with methadone was included in this study. At the beginning of the withdrawal therapy, the authors recorded the parameters involved in the most common oral diseases. Moreover, it was evaluated how, during the rehabilitation protocol, the behavioral parameters and the xerostomia that influence the oral health changed.

Addiction treatment has not been appreciably improved by neuroscientific research. One problem is that mechanistic studies using rodent models do not incorporate volitional social factors, which play a critical role in human addiction. Here, using rats, we introduce an operant model of choice between drugs and social interaction. Independent of sex, drug class, drug dose, training conditions, abstinence duration, social housing, or addiction score in Diagnostic & Statistical Manual IV-based and intermittent access models, operant social reward prevented drug self-administration.

Background: In this paper, we reviewed translational studies concerned with environmental influences on the rewarding effects of heroin versus cocaine in rats and humans with substance use disorder. These studies show that both experienced utility (‘liking’) and decision utility (‘wanting’) of heroin and cocaine shift in opposite directions as a function of the setting in which these drugs were used. Briefly, rats and humans prefer using heroin at home but cocaine outside the home.

Introduction: The mortality rate of opioid users is 5 to 10 times greater than that of the general population, and the most common cause of death in that case is an overdose. When treated in a timely fashion with the opioid antagonist naloxone, an opioid overdose is rarely lethal. Unfortunately, many opioid overdoses occur in isolated, hidden, inaccessible locations.

Previous studies have shown that rats trained to self-administer heroin and cocaine exhibit opposite preferences, as a function of setting, when tested in a choice paradigm. Rats tested at home prefer heroin to cocaine, whereas rats tested outside the home prefer cocaine to heroin. Here, we investigated whether drug history would influence subsequent drug preference in distinct settings. Based on a theoretical model of drug-setting interaction, we predicted that regardless of drug history rats would prefer heroin at home and cocaine outside the home.

Previous studies have suggested that at least some of the behavioral effects of heroin might be mediated by its active metabolite 6-acetylmorphine (6-AM). The aim of the present study was to investigate the reinforcing effects of 6-AM and its role in mediating those of heroin. We used an intravenous self-administration procedure in male Sprague-Dawley rats including four phases: acquisition, extinction, reinstatement of drug-seeking, and re-acquisition.