Actually, while morphine and heroin are in the same category of drugs, they're metabolized in a slightly different manner. Heroin's metabolite (6-monoacetyl morphine) is actually what causes most of the effects of the drug, and because different people have different amounts of the liver enzymes that metabolize this drug, there's no way to tell ahead of time how much of the active metabolite will be produced. The active metabolite also has certain properties that regular morphine doesn't have...it crosses the blood-brain barrier, and therefore causes more problems with respiratory depression than does morphine, and makes it stay in the body longer than regular morphine. It's not as controlled or as predictable as morphine, and not something I'll be giving my patients.
Apologies for the ramble, I have a board exam coming up this week and these sorts of medical/pharmacology blurbs keep spilling out. Too much studying is bad.
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Pharmacology babble!!
Date: 2005-06-12 03:50 am (UTC)Apologies for the ramble, I have a board exam coming up this week and these sorts of medical/pharmacology blurbs keep spilling out. Too much studying is bad.