Molecular and cellular mechanisms of opiate addiction / 中国药理学通报

ABSTRACT

Addiction is gaining recognition as a leading cause of death, morbility and lost productivity. The urgent clinical and social need to do something about addiction promotes the development of addciton research. This paper reviews the main advances in this area in the latest thirty years, ranging from the initial targets of the major drugs of abuse, to the cAMP pathway in opiate tolerence and dependence and molecular and cellular mechanisms of addiction in VTA-NAc pathway.