Donna A Volpe, Grainne A McMahon Tobin, R Daniel Mellon, Aspandiar G Katki, Robert J Parker, Thomas Colatsky, Timothy J Kropp, S Leigh Verbois
The safe disposal of unused opioid drugs is an area of regulatory concern. While toilet flushing is recommended for some drugs to prevent accidental exposure, there is a need for data that can support a more consistent disposal policy based on an assessment of relative risk. For drugs acting at the Mu-opioid receptor (MOR), published measurements of binding affinity (K(i)) are incomplete and inconsistent due to differences in methodology and assay system, leading to a wide range of values for the same drug thus precluding a simple and meaningful relative ranking of drug potency...
April 2011: Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology: RTP