Journal of Addiction Research & Therapy
Open Access

Commentary

Coupling Genetic Addiction Risk Score (GARS) with Electrotherapy: Fighting Iatrogenic Opioid Dependence

¹Department of Psychiatry, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida, College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA

²Departments of Psychiatry and Anatomy & Neurobiology, Boston University School of Medicine, and Boston, VA Healthcare System, Boston, MA, USA

³Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of Pennsylvania, Philidelphia, Pennslyvania, USA

⁴Department of Holistic Medicine, National Institute for Holistic Addiction STudies, Inc. North Miami Beach, Fl, USA

⁵Department of Clinical Neurology, PATH Foundation NY, New York, NY, USA

⁶Center for Genomics and Applied Gene Technology, Institute of Integrative Omics and Applied Biotechnology (IIOAB), Nonakuri, Purbe Medinpur, West Bengal, India

⁷Department of Psychiatry, University at Buffalo & Harvard University, Psychiatrist, WNY VAMC, Buffalo, NY, USA

⁸Dominion Diagnostics, LLC., North Kingstown, Rhode Island, USA

⁹Department of Addiction Research & Therapy, Malibu Beach Recovery Center, Malibu Beach California, USA

¹⁰Department of Nutrigenomics, IGENE LLC., Austin Texas, USA

*Corresponding Author:

Kenneth Blum
Department of Psychiatry
McKnight Brain Institute
University of Florida
College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA
Email: drd2gene@gmail.com

Received date: September 02, 2013; Accepted date: October 23, 2013; Published date: October 31, 2013

Citation: Blum K, Oscar-Berman M, DiNubile N, Giordano J, Braverman ER, et al. (2013) Coupling Genetic Addiction Risk Score (GARS) with Electrotherapy: Fighting Iatrogenic Opioid Dependence. J Addict Res Ther 4:163. doi:10.4172/2155-6105.1000163

Copyright: © 2013 Blum K, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

The endemic of legal opioid iatrogenic induced prescription drug abuse is of major world-wide concern. Understanding pain pathways and the role of dopaminergic tone in the neurophysiology of pain relief provides potential therapeutic solutions. A 2011 NIDA report indicated that approximately 8.7% of the entire US population above the age of 12 years has used a psychoactive drug within the past 30 days. It has been reported that the overall genetic contribution to the variance of Substance Use Disorder (SUD) was approximately 60% but each candidate gene evaluated by GWAS was relatively small. In an attempt to combat this global endemic we are proposing a number of alternative strategies. Prevention of death due to opioid overdose and attenuation of prescription abuse should focus on strategies that target 1) high-dosage medical users; 2) persons who seek care from multiple doctors; 3) persons involved in “drug diversion”; 4) genetic testing for addiction liability and severity indices; 5) non-pharmacolgical analgesic treatments such as electrotherapy.

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