Tuesday, May 2nd, 2006 at 14:00 in Benzon auditorium

The Danish University of Pharmaceutical Sciences Universitetsparken 2, 2100 Copenhagen O

In treating pain with opioids, it is always possible to achieve total pain relief, however not always without the patient suffering from unacceptable side-effects. Thus pain treatment with opioids will often be a balance between sufficient analgesia and occurrence of side-effects. A balance, which could only be determined by the individual patient.

It was not until the early 1970'ies that the mechanisms of which opiods exerts their analgesic action  as well as their side-effects by interaction with receptors were elucidated, and until recently these receptors were  believed to be present only in the CNS at spinal and supraspinal level. And now during the recent years it has become more and more evident, that besides the different interaction profiles with the receptors, also the kinetics of the distribution processes  of opioids in the different body tissues (blood, lung, brain parenchyma and brain extracellular fluid) greatly affects the mode of action of the different opioids. Exploring this is leading to a better understanding of why it is not possible to predict the time span of opioid effect simply by a terminal plasma halfe-life and thereby to a more detailed knowledge of the reasons for differences in the opiods mode of action  and consequently to a future possibility of individualizing opioid  therapy.

We expect the symposium to attract  both clinical and basic opiods researchers from universities, hospitals and industry all over Denmark, enableling our PhD students to expand their scientific network.

The symposium is a joint meeting between the Drug Research Academy and  the Danish Opioid Science Centre

Organisers: Lona Christrup and Ole J. Bjerrum, Department of Pharmacology and Pharmacotherapy, The Danish University of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Niels-Henrik Jensen, The Multidisciplinary Pain Centre, Copenhagen University Hospiatl, Herlev

The participation is free of charge and is open for attendance by all interested parties. No registration is required.