Medical Specialties Commons^™

The Line Between Addiction And Medication: Alcohol, Anesthesia, And Analgesia, Priya Joshi, B.S., Emanual Rubin, Md

Department of Pathology Honors Program Student Research Symposium

Alcohol is a particularly dangerous addiction because its consumption is legal even in excess, despite its harmful effects. Because alcohol has a multitude of targets in the central nervous system that are modified during chronic exposure, medications with overlapping targets such as anesthetics and analgesics must be modified when given to alcoholics. Unfortunately, as relatively little is known about the mechanism of addiction, it is difficult to predict how medications will be affected by central adaptation to chronic alcohol exposure. This review summarizes the consequences of alcohol exposure with particular attention to the GABA_Areceptor, and discusses the reasons …