mad_scientist
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Apr 20, 2006
- Messages
- 619
Some corticosteroids such as prednisone and dexamethasone cause euphoria as a side effect especially at the start of treatment, although it diminishes after a few days once your body becomes tolerant to the steroid, and indeed with prolonged treatment at high dose the opposite effect develops and you get depressed and irritable.
Is anyone aware of research into the mechanism for this? It seems to be directly mediated through the steroid receptors according to this paper;
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8983088
but I can't find much more information out about it. Seems like another potential target for euphoria-inducing drugs, I wonder if it would be possible to make a drug which acted via this target but lacked the various side effects of corticosteroid drugs, and didn't produce tolerance to the euphoria so quickly. Certainly seems to be quite seperate from the mechanisms of any conventional drugs of abuse, although I bet secondary dopamine release is involved to some extent.
Is anyone aware of research into the mechanism for this? It seems to be directly mediated through the steroid receptors according to this paper;
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8983088
but I can't find much more information out about it. Seems like another potential target for euphoria-inducing drugs, I wonder if it would be possible to make a drug which acted via this target but lacked the various side effects of corticosteroid drugs, and didn't produce tolerance to the euphoria so quickly. Certainly seems to be quite seperate from the mechanisms of any conventional drugs of abuse, although I bet secondary dopamine release is involved to some extent.