Mark Moran, Kenneth Blum, Jessica Valdez Ponce, Lisa Lott, Marjorie C Gondré-Lewis, Sampada Badgaiyan, Raymond Brewer, B William Downs, Philip Fynman, Alexander Weingarten, Jean Lud Cadet, David E Smith, David Baron, Panayotis K Thanos, Edward J Modestino, Rajendra D Badgaiyan, Igor Elman, Mark S Gold
Millions of Americans experience pain daily. In 2017, opioid overdose claimed 64,000 lives increasing to 84,000 lives in 2020, resulting in a decrease in national life expectancy. Chronic opioid use results in dependency, drug tolerance, neuroadaptation, hyperalgesia, potential addictive behaviors, or Reward Deficiency Syndrome (RDS) caused by a hypodopaminergia. Evaluation of pain clinic patients with the Genetic Addiction Risk Score (GARS) test and the Addiction Severity Index (ASI- Media Version V) revealed that GARS scores equal to or greater than 4 and 7 alleles significantly predicted drug and alcohol severity, respectively...
July 2021: Molecular Neurobiology