CHICAGO, Feb. 10 (UPI) -- Researchers said this week that the anti-psychotic drug trifluoperazine might help break addiction to painkillers.
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) said that they injected a small dose of trifluoperazine, used to treat schizophrenia and other mental illnesses, into laboratory mice hooked on morphine.
After a few hours the animals' addiction was gone, the researchers said, noting that this is the first study to suggest trifluoperazine's anti-addictive properties.
"From studies conducted in the 1970s and 1980s, we know that trifluoperazine inhibits calmodulin,a molecule that is required for the activation of an enzyme called calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase-2(CaMK-2)," said Z. Jim Wang, assistant professor of pharmacology at the university's College of Pharmacy.
"In previous studies we performed at UIC, we know that CaMK-2 plays a role in the generation and maintenance of opioid (painkiller) tolerance," he said. Tolerance is a hallmark of drug dependence, Wang said.
"Trifluoperazine targets this pathway, which then stops the addiction," he said. "When this occurs, you can still use a relatively low dose of the painkiller to achieve fairly good pain control and no drug dependence," he said.
Opioids such as morphine are commonly used in pain management, but many patients are wary of taking them because of concerns over addiction or adverse side effects, the researchers said.
