Opioid tolerance and dependence--pharmacological aspects

Prolonged opioids administration leads inevitably to tolerance and dependence, a phenomenon we meet more often in healthy people than in ill patients. Tolerance means a hypersensibility of neuronal membranes as well as changes in the number and affinity of opioid receptors, which implies intake of larger doses to obtain the initial effect. Physical dependence, quite different of the psychological one, is the appearance of abstinence syndrome on sudden interruption of opioid administration or on administration of an antagonist. There is usually cross-tolerance in opioids, but it can also be incomplete, when the initial opioid can be replaced with another one that produces a milder abstinence syndrome. Classically, metadone is used in long time therapy, after detoxification with an antagonist is performed (naloxon, naltrexon). Modern pharmacological alternatives are levo-alpha-acetyl-methadol (LAAM) and agonists-antagonists (butorphanol, buprenorphine, pentazocine, nalbuphine). An antagonist can also be used if associated with an alpha--stimulant (clonidine), in order to remove noradrenergic manifestations of abstinence syndrome. Now other therapeutical principles are being studied: enkephalinaze inhibitors to reduce the abstinence syndrome, NMDA receptor antagonists, NO sintetasis inhibitors, that facilitates opioid analgesia and hinders tolerance development; colecystokinin-receptors agonists or antagonists to reduce tolerance on morphine. A recent study showed that the concomitant administration of an opioid agonist (sufentanil) and a calcium channels blocker (nimodipine) not only prevents from tolerance development but also triggers hypersensibility to analgesic effects of the opioid.