8/25/2023 0 Comments Liquid gold supplement for dogsIn that double-blind, crossover, counterbalanced study, 57 % of the participants were observed to exhibit a significant (1/3) reduction of pain during LDN. To help validate the findings, a second study in 30 women with fibromyalgia was conducted. While the pilot study was encouraging, it had limitations such as a single-blind design. In the first crossover trial, published in 2009, LDN reduced fibromyalgia pain significantly greater than placebo in 6 out of the 10 women. In both trials, LDN was administered at 4.5 mg daily, once at night before bedtime. We have shown in two separate, small clinical trials that LDN may be an effective treatment for FM. Although FM does not respond to common anti-inflammatories and does not seem to be an inflammatory disorder in the classic sense, inflammatory processes may still be involved. FM is a chronic pain disorder that is characterized by diffuse musculoskeletal pain and sensitivity to mechanical stimulation as well as profound fatigue, cognitive disruption, and sleep difficulty. LDN has been tested experimentally in a small number of chronic pain conditions. Since that time, LDN has been studied in a small number of labs and has been slowly gaining attention as a possible treatment for some chronic medical conditions. Basic science work examining the use of opioid antagonists for treating disease states did not start to appear until the late 1980s, and the first published LDN trial in humans was presented in 2007. LDN was reported to have interesting physiological properties (primarily enhancement of endogenous opioid production) in the 1980s, and the treatment approach was reported to be used clinically since the mid-1980s. At the low dosage level, naltrexone exhibits paradoxical properties, including analgesia and anti-inflammatory actions, which have not been reported at larger dosages. In most published research, the daily dosage is 4.5 mg, though the dosage can vary a few milligrams below or above that common value. LDN refers to daily dosages of naltrexone that are approximately 1/10th of the typical opioid addiction treatment dosage. A more complete review of the early history of naltrexone can be found elsewhere. The typical daily dosage for opioid addiction is 50.0–100.0 mg daily, and 50.0-mg tablets are available commercially. Naltrexone HCl was approved by FDA in 1984 for the treatment of opioid addiction. Naltrexone is structurally and functionally similar to the opioid antagonist naloxone, but it has greater oral bioavailability and a longer biologic half-life. Naltrexone was synthesized in 1963 as an orally active competitive opioid receptor antagonist. Ultralow-dose naltrexone has been covered extensively in previous reviews and will not be discussed here. The approach is used to both increase the efficacy of opioid analgesia therapy and reduce some adverse side effects. The closely related concept of ultralow-dose naltrexone involves the use of microgram, nanogram, and picogram dosages of naltrexone co-administered with opioid analgesics. We will be focusing this discussion on LDN as a monotherapy for chronic pain. This review is intended for clinicians who are seeking additional information about the background, theory, mechanism of action, and research use of LDN. We will further present the rationale for considering LDN as a primary example of a relatively new class of therapeutic agents called glial cell modulators. Within a specific dosage window, opioid antagonists such as naltrexone can exert a “paradoxical” analgesic effect. In this review, we will discuss the concept of using low-dose naltrexone (LDN) as a novel anti-inflammatory treatment for chronic pain conditions that are suspected to be associated with inflammatory processes.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |