Buprenorphine
Pronunciation:boo-preh-NOHR-feen
Chemical Abstracts Service Registry Number:52485-79-7. (Hydrochloride form
53152-21-9)
Formal Names:Buprenex, Subutex, Temgesic, Tidigesic
Type:Depressant (opiate class).Seepage 22
Federal Schedule Listing:Schedule V (DEA no. 9064). In 2002 a rescheduling to
III was underway.
USA Availability:Prescription
Pregnancy Category:C
Uses.This pain reliever is produced fromthebaineand is both longer last-
ing thanmorphineand 25 to 50 times stronger. Buprenorphine is given to
persons suffering from conditions causing great discomfort, such as cancer,
pancreatitis, and surgery. Experimental use of the drug to treat depression
and schizophrenia has had promising results.
Drawbacks.Typical unwanted effects are sedation, nausea, constipation,
dizziness, sweating, and low blood pressure. Impairment of breathing can
occur. The drug can interfere with skills needed to operate a car or other
dangerous machinery; volunteers in one experiment still had trouble eight
hours after a dose. Visual or auditory hallucinations are possible. A medical
case report tells of a heart attack after someone inhaled powder from a pul-
verized oral buprenorphine tablet. Heart trouble has also been noted when
the drug is used medically, but in a therapeutic context, such difficulty is very
unusual. Long-term administration of the drug in mice can change their blood
composition, including a drastic decline in the number of white blood cells,
but these changes clear up after administration of buprenorphine stops.
Abuse factors.Although the drug produces sensations likened to those of
morphine, when this book was written, buprenorphine was a Schedule V con-
trolled substance, a classification reserved for drugs with the lowest addictive
potential. Research conducted on behalf of the National Institute on Drug
Abuse and published in 2001 found no illicit buprenorphine use in the United
States but described the drug as having appeal to street markets. Such a mar-
ket may develop; in an experiment testing opiate users’ ability to detect dif-
ferences among drugs, the volunteers misidentified buprenorphine asheroin.