Yeona Kang, Kelly A O'Conor, Andrew C Kelleher, Joseph Ramsey, Abolghasem Bakhoda, Seth M Eisenberg, Wenjing Zhao, Tyler Stodden, Torben D Pearson, Min Guo, Nina Brown, Jeih-San Liow, Joanna S Fowler, Sung Won Kim, Nora D Volkow
The continuous rise in opioid overdoses in the United States is predominantly driven by very potent synthetic opioids, mostly fentanyl and its derivatives (fentanyls). Although naloxone (NLX) has been shown to effectively reverse overdoses by conventional opioids, there may be a need for higher or repeated doses of NLX to revert overdoses from highly potent fentanyls. Here, we used positron emission tomography (PET) to assess NLX's dose-dependence on both its rate of displacement of [11 C]carfentanil ([11 C]CFN) binding and its duration of mu opioid receptor (MOR) occupancy in the male rat brain...
April 19, 2022: Scientific Reports