
Researchers Develop Safer Opioid Painkiller - Someone
https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2016/08/403836/researchers-develop-safer-opioid-painkiller-scratch
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1propionyl
This was the story with heroin, oxymorphone, codeine... Practically every
generation was in theory safer and actually turned out to be much worse.

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1propionyl
I should clarify I'm supposing that by opioid they mean morphine based
opioids.

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jcoffland
You should probably read the article. It's not morphine based.

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goldenkey
It is targeting mu opioid receptors, mentioned in the article as "morphine
receptor."

It may not contain morphine, chemically, but neither does oxymorphone, it's
only similar.. the only drug mentioned that actually contains morphine, ie. is
morphine based is heroin. But having side chains and other additions can
totally change a drugs' effects. Morphine-based is a poor distinction.

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fifteenforty
This is interesting, but doesn't get me too excited. Respiratory depression,
whilst a perpetual issue in the the medical use of opioids, isn't necessarily
a problem at the lower doses that the evidence suggests actually works. It's a
problem at high doses, but those high doses don't provide significant benefits
over smaller doses and are associated with hyper-sensitivity to pain and
opioid tolerance.

Don't get me wrong though, respiratory depression and arrest is a real thing.
I deliberately induce it as part of an anaesthetic every day.

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gozur88
Wow, it would be nice if this one pans out. A friend of mine had open heart
surgery, and he never once complained about pain in his chest or his leg or
the fact that he couldn't push down and couldn't walk far or any of the other
stuff that goes along with it.

But the side effects from the opioids were driving him crazy. After a few days
he stopped taking them because the pain was easier to deal with.

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slantaclaus
This is what Purdue Pharmaceuticals said about Oxycontin

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girvo
The headline, yes. But if you read the actual article, it seems it's working
with the same endorphin receptors without the dangerous side-effects; further,
the article hedges its bets by explaining that this is purely in mice so far,
and this drug candidate has a long way to go, but as it's a novel opioid that
isn't derived from morphine, there is reason for very cautious optimism.

Numerous other novel opioids that aren't morphine derived have shown that it
is possible to come close to the pain relief offered, while mitigating the
negative side-effects. This is not impossible, I believe, but it'll be
interesting to see whether PZM21 is 'the one'.

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Pitarou
Could we now please get a move on and use the same trick to develop new
antibiotics?

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fuzzfactor
Roger, it's not the opiates, it's the trick:

"An international team of researchers — . . . Their secret? Starting from
scratch — with computational techniques that let them explore more than four
trillion different chemical interactions."

This was exactly my idea back in the mid-'70's when I thought of one of the
ways computer science could be applied to drug development. Of course all we
had were mainframes, but so did the drug companies.

Then, my first employment was with a pharmaceutical producer, I got the
impression they were actually further away from this compared to starting a
whole new drug company from scratch itself.

Until new antibiotics come along, when necessary you might want to investigate
older, more well-established germ-killers like colloidal silver. The real
thing is hard to beat, but it is outnumbered by quack versions and get-rich-
quick schemers.

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pashapiro
I wonder if the cost of this research is greater than the cost for lobbyists
to legalize medical marijuana.

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jcoffland
The problem with medical marijuana is that it doesn't relieve severe pain and
it gets you stoned which not everybody wants.

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frozenport
Not to mention that smoking a plant isn't an efficient or specific drug
delivery vehicle.

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perfmode
Patients often use liquid tinctures.

