Abordagens integrativas na prevenção de recaída por morfina em ratos: organoterápico e isoterápico

Abstract

The World Health Organization (WHO) determines drug addiction as a chronic and recurrent disease, constituting an alarming public health problem. Considering the recreational use of psychoactive drugs, such as morphine (MORPH), dependence (compulsion to use), tolerance, abstinence syndrome and relapse can be triggered after withdrawal. Reinstatement to opioid drug use is one of the main obstacles to the success of detoxification treatment, since most individuals fall back to drug use after the detoxification period. In general, the pharmacological treatments developed to date are only symptomatic, proving to be ineffective when the situation involves drug addiction. In this sense, natural therapies such as ultra-diluted medicines that aim to reestablish and integrate the organism into its homeostasis represent promising therapeutic potential in the treatment of this condition, since the dysregulation of the homeostatic balance is directly related to impulsive-compulsive, emotional, social and physical symptoms caused by the drug. This project aims to evaluate the therapeutic potential of both medicines on behavioral and molecular parameters related to MORPH reinstatement. Rats were exposed to MORPH in the conditioned place preference (CPP) paradigm to assess the drug's addictive and drug-seeking symptoms, and subsequently treated with both homeopathy medicines for 14 days. After MORPH-preference extinction, animals were challenged to MORPH reconditioning in the same CPP paradigm to evaluate MOPRH-reinstatement. Behaviors related to drug addiction, anxiety-like, memory and locomotion were assessed evaluated during drug withdrawal, followed by ex vivo assays. Our results showed MORPH-preference confirming the strong hedonic power of the drug. In the memory test and locomotor activity, no differences were observed between the groups, thus confirming the results of the CPP paradigm. Both ISO and ORG medicines prevented reinstatement-like behavior of MORPH. Molecular analysis are still being carried out. In conclusion, as far as we know, this study shows by the first time that both ultra-high dilution medicines may be an alternative which can contribute with opioid addiction reestablishing the body's physiological functions when exposed to toxic agents such as MORPH.