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Cited by 517

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 33 of the 33 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Morphine activates neuroinflammation in a manner parallel to endotoxin

Open access
Wang, Xiaohui, Loram, Lisa C., Ramos, Khara, de Jesus, Armando J., Thomas, Jacob, Cheng, Kui, Reddy, Anireddy, Somogyi, Andrew A., Hutchinson, Mark R., Watkins, Linda R., Yin, Hang·2012·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Abstract

Opioids create a neuroinflammatory response within the CNS, compromising opioid-induced analgesia and contributing to various unwanted actions. How this occurs is unknown but has been assumed to be via classic opioid receptors. Herein, we provide direct evidence that morphine creates neuroinflammation via the activation of an innate immune receptor and not via classic opioid receptors. We demonstrate that morphine binds to an accessory protein of Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4), myeloid differentiation protein 2 (MD-2), thereby inducing TLR4 oligomerization and triggering proinflammation. Small-molecule inhibitors, RNA interference, and genetic knockout validate the TLR4/MD-2 complex as a feasible target for beneficially modifying morphine actions. Disrupting TLR4/MD-2 protein–protein association potentiated morphine analgesia in vivo and abolished morphine-induced proinflammation in vitro, the latter demonstrating that morphine-induced proinflammation only depends on TLR4, despite the presence of opioid receptors. These results provide an exciting, nonconventional avenue to improving the clinical efficacy of opioids.

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Crossref · 10.1073/pnas.1200130109

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Metadata

Authors
Wang, X., Loram, L. C., Ramos, K., de Jesus, A. J., Thomas, J., Cheng, K., Reddy, A., Somogyi, A. A., Hutchinson, M. R., Watkins, L. R., & Yin, H.
Venue
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Published
2012-04-02
Volume
109
Issue
16
Pages
6325-6330
ISSN
  • 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
  • 1091-6490
OpenAlex
W1988795126
Cited by
517
References
33
FWCI
20.57
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
green

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Morphine activates neuroinflammation in a manner parallel to endotoxin. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1073/pnas.1200130109
The paper
Wang, X., Loram, L. C., Ramos, K., de Jesus, A. J., Thomas, J., Cheng, K., Reddy, A., Somogyi, A. A., Hutchinson, M. R., Watkins, L. R., & Yin, H. (2012). Morphine activates neuroinflammation in a manner parallel to endotoxin. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1200130109

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.