Clinical Perspectives of Endogenous Opioids Peptides

The symposium on "Opioids, Past, Present and Future" held in Cambridge in 1983 to celebrate the 80th birthday of Professor Hans Kosterlitz clearly showed that a considerable amount of information on opioid peptides had been produced in only 10 years. In 1973, three independent research groups had demonstrated that exogenous opiates combine with specific receptors in the brain and intestinal nerve plexus, while two years later the structures of two endogenous pentapeptides with opioid-receptor binding activity, leu and met-enkephalin, were described. Since that symposium the use of modern laboratory tools has increasingly amplified our knowledge of the localization, roles and effects of opioid peptides. The long established clinical use of opiate alkaloids has facilitated the study both of endogenous opioid production in pathological conditions, and the possible implication of endogenous opioid derangement. The clinical investigation of endogenous opioid peptides is the focus of this volume.
The editors have decided to allow each author or group of contributors to highlight their own view of the current state of opioid research, and thus there will be of necessity some overlap between chapters. Nevertheless it is hoped that this volume will give an up-to-date and useful review of the current state of opioid peptide research, particularly with respect of possible clinical relevance in neuroendocrine, neuroimmune, cardiovascular and glucose homeostasis. In the future attention must be paid to the therapeutic application of agonists and antagonists of opioid peptide receptors.