Chronic opioid pretreatment potentiates the sensitization of fear learning by trauma

It’s known that there’s a relationship between post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, and a higher rate of opioid abuse. What isn’t understood, though, is what that relationship is. Does PTSD cause people to turn to opioids in particular among all the potential drugs of abuse, or is there something about opioid use that makes users particularly sensitive to trauma?

This is just what Michael Fanselow, professor in the psychology and psychiatry departments at UCLA, and his colleagues investigated for a recent study in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology.

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