While amphetamines have clinical use, their potential for abuse and dependency is high. Legitimate use may turn into addiction. Amphetamines such as Adderall and non-amphetamine stimulants like Ritalin are gaining in popularity as recreational drugs, often abused for their euphoric and energy-producing effects.
If you choose to use study drugs with or without a prescription, you may experience a number of unwanted side effects, including overdose. Call 911 if you or someone you know experiences any of the following:
You Can Overcome Speed Drug Effects
Stimulant drugs speed up the nervous system. By speeding up the nervous system, stimulant medications can make you feel jittery and speed up your heartbeat. Khat might also speed up the nervous system. Taking khat with stimulant drugs might cause serious problems including increased heart rate and high blood pressure. Avoid taking stimulant drugs along with khat.
Speed users may also use other drugs, such as heroin, prescription painkillers, cocaine, and alcohol. In fact, more than 60% of emergency department visits for methamphetamine abuse involve other drugs.6 Even combining speed with over-the-counter medications, such as decongestants, can result in dangerous elevations in blood pressure.10
People who recover from a speed overdose may still have a problem with substance abuse. Seeking help from a drug recovery center is imperative to prevent another overdose and to help overcome the compulsion to continue abusing these dangerous substances.
The first step of the detoxification process is to alleviate withdrawal symptoms (depression, fatigue, anxiety, drug craving) by gradually reducing the amount of the drug. After detox, professionals rely on behavioral and group therapies, usually in combination with each other. Cognitive behavioral therapy, contingency management, and the Matrix Model are potential therapies to help people recover from speed overdose and addiction. 9,10 These treatments are available in inpatient and outpatient settings.
Because Adderall is a stimulant, it is sometimes used to treat sexual side effects that might come with certain antidepressant drugs. Each person's body is different. So there is no guarantee for how your body will react.
Like with all medications, you need to strike a balance between managing the side effects of a drug and treating your condition. There are two kinds of stimulant medications available to treat ADHD. There is methylphenidate (e.g. Ritalin) and the amphetamine family (Adderall).
The active ingredients in Adderall are amphetamine salts. Adderall XR contains the same mixture of amphetamine salts in an extended-release oral capsule. Like all stimulants, Adderall has several side effects, warnings, restrictions, and drug interactions that patients or their caregivers should be familiar with when taking or administering this medication.
Loss of appetite and weight loss are possible side effects of Adderall. Because of these side effects, some physicians prescribe Adderall off-label for weight loss, and some people acquire the drug illegally for the same purpose. However, Adderall is not approved by the FDA as a weight-loss medication and can have serious side effects that outweigh the benefits of weight loss.
Amphetamines can decrease sex drive and even cause impotence (erectile dysfunction). Both effects were reported by 2% to 4% of adults participating in Adderall XR clinical trials. Alternative medications, such as Ritalin (methylphenidate) for ADHD and the narcolepsy drugs modafinil and armodafinil may be less likely to cause a decrease in libido. Vyvanse (lisdexamfetamine dimesylate) can cause similar sexual side effects as Adderall, and Strattera (atomoxetine), another ADHD drug, may also cause sexual side effects.
Side effects of Adderall are usually temporary, and they often go away with consistent use of the medication or when the medicine is discontinued. Some severe side effects such as heart-related problems could lead to life-threatening events like heart attacks and strokes. Although rare, the effects of growth suppression in children and adolescents could last a lifetime if the drug is not discontinued.
Drug-resistant cells contribute to the cellular heterogeneity that challenges NP delivery186. For example, resistance to platinum (II)-based drugs, such as oxaliplatin and cisplatin, which distort DNA structure to induce apoptosis, can occur if cancer cells overexpress efflux pumps or increase their rate of DNA repair. Thus, smart NP platforms must be engineered to overcome these barriers. For example, micelles deliver NPs more effectively to the nucleus, and thus the cell has fewer opportunities to acquire drug resistance187,188. Thus, both cell type and acquired phenotypes that lead to a heterogeneous cell population create diverse barriers to NP delivery, but new developments in NP design may help overcome these obstacles.
To account for the vast heterogeneity of biological barriers and disease states within and across patient populations, methods must be developed to deliver therapeutics in a manner that is highly modular and customizable. This section details the effects of various NP properties on delivery, with a focus on how individual NP design choices (such as architecture, material properties, targeting and responsiveness; Fig. 5) can overcome barriers specific to individual diseases and patients.
The immune system is trained to eliminate cancerous cells from the body, but certain genetic traits can allow cancerous cells to evade and suppress immune cells. To resensitize these cells, cancer vaccines aim to train the body to recognize cancerous cells by using antigens either from the patient or from allogenic tumour cells. For example, Sipuleucel-T, an FDA-approved cancer vaccine (albeit with limited efficacy)221, utilizes recombinant antigens specific to the tumour type. Although the drugs are not yet in the clinic, other groups have also developed synthetic peptides and tumour lysates with the ultimate goal of patient personalization223,224,225. NPs can protect these antigens from degradation, improve the likelihood that they are presented to target immune cells and reduce off-target effects. Antigen-presenting cells (APCs) that take up these NP systems present the antigen cargo to T cells to prime and activate them. NPs used in these systems can be polymeric (PLGA)226, lipid-based (liposomes, LNPs)227,228, inorganic (gold, silica)229,230 or biologically derived (cell-membrane vesicles)231,232. NP-based cancer vaccines are currently being used in clinical trials233. Recently, NPs have been extensively explored in vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 (which causes COVID-19), with multiple successful late-stage clinical trials. Companies such as Moderna and BioNTech use LNPs to encapsulate mRNA that encodes for a COVID-19 antigen. As of 30 November 2020, Moderna and BioNTech/Pfizer have met their primary efficacy end points in phase III trials and have applied for Emergency Use Authorization. As with other applications, NP architecture, material properties and active targeting can affect cellular uptake, antigen presentation and the strength of the immune response234.
Recent advances in CRISPR, transcription activator-like effector nuclease (TALEN) and zinc-finger nuclease (ZFN) technologies are making it increasingly easy to engineer the genome for widespread use in biomedical research, drug development and discovery, and gene therapy268. This is important in the context of precision medicine, as over 3,000 human genes have been associated with Mendelian diseases but less than 5% of rare diseases have effective treatments268. Advances in genome editing are now making it possible to correct many of these rare diseases. However, efficient and safe delivery is still needed for genome-editing systems to effectively target and enter tissues and cells of interest, while also minimizing toxicity269. Delivery of genome-editing systems is challenging because these systems are multicomponent, hold sensitive cargo and need to overcome several extracellular and intracellular biological barriers to reach the genome of target cells. Lipid-based and polymer-based NPs have delivered a range of nucleic acids in vivo, and are in various stages of clinical development24,44,104,183. For example, a LNP siRNA drug termed Onpattro (patisiran) was recently approved by the FDA for the treatment of amyloidosis270. In the context of genome editing, NPs have the potential to be less toxic and immunogenic than viral vectors, which have a history of safety concerns271,272.
Thanks to emerging AI technology, pharma has started to see revolutionary changes, not only in identifying drug targets, but also in accelerating clinical trials. A growing number of large pharmaceutical companies have put great store in AI technology to overcome the enormous obstacles by improving the quality and efficiency of clinical trials.
The use of central nervous system stimulants like Adderall produces a release of excitatory neurotransmitters, such as norepinephrine, dopamine, and forms of glutamate in the central nervous system. Abuse of these drugs leads to a significant increase in the availability of these neurotransmitters. This release of excitatory neurotransmitters accounts for the effects of the drug, such as increased attention concentration, higher energy levels, decreased appetite, decreased need for sleep, etc.
Abuse of the drug is often associated with taking the drug at higher doses than would normally be taken for medical reasons and taking it more frequently. The massive neurotransmitter release that the drug induces is counterbalanced by a massive depletion of these neurotransmitters once the effects of the drug begin to wear off. The acute effects that occur with abuse of the drug, such as feelings of euphoria, increased energy, etc., wear off rapidly, and stimulant abusers typically begin to binge on the drug once the desired psychoactive effects begin to dissipate. 2ff7e9595c
Comments