| Popis: |
Morphine and other opioids are powerful drugs used for pain relief, but their clinical use has limitations as prolonged treatment leads to tolerance and addiction. Opioids bind to opioid receptors, and besides pain, they regulate mood and stress. Even though the primary role of opioids and opioid receptors is in the central nervous system, they also affect the immune system. The mechanisms of how they affect the immune system, but also the mechanisms of tolerance and addiction build-out, are not fully understood. These processes may be demonstrated as changes in the opioid receptor expression level, alteration in their function or oligomeric state. The dimerization of opioid receptors is a controversial topic in literature with many contradictory results. In this work, changes in the protein level of opioid receptors in the rat forebrain cortex were not observed after morphine treatment. However, a specific increase in the amount of µ- opioid receptors was determined in rat lymphocytes, using flow cytometry. In other studies, an increased mRNA level of the µ-opioid receptor was connected with immunosuppression. The increased µ-opioid receptor protein level indicates a similar effect. The overall effect of morphine on the protein composition of lymphocytes was determined by proteomic analysis. The... |
