Opiates increase the number of hypocretin-producing cells in human and mouse brain and reverse cataplexy in a mouse model of narcolepsy.

ABSTRACT: The changes in brain function that perpetuate opiate addiction are unclear. In our studies of human narcolepsy, a disease caused by loss of immunohistochemically detected hypocretin (orexin) neurons, we encountered a control brain (from an apparently neurologically normal individual) with 50% more hypocretin neurons than other control human brains that we had studied. We discovered that this individual was a heroin addict. Studying five postmortem brains from heroin addicts, we report that the brain tissue had, on average, 54% more immunohistochemically detected neurons producing hypocretin than did control brains from neurologically normal subjects. Similar increases in hypocretin-producing cells could be induced in wild-type mice by long-term (but not short-term) administration of morphi

SUBMITTER: Thannickal TC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8235614 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature