bentley immobilizer activated

How does Subutex interact with other opiates?

There are two concepts with drugs that determine their strength; affinity and efficacy. Affinity is the measure of how strong a drug binds at a receptor. A drug with a high affinity will displace drugs with lower affinities from the receptor. Efficacy is the measure of activation of a receptor population. A full agonist causes the whole receptor population to be stabilized in their active state causing a maximal response from the receptor (assuming full occupancy, dependant on affinity). An antagonist binds to the receptors and stabilizes them in the inactive conformation, causing no response (unless the receptors fire tonically, which means that there is constant baseline firing of the receptor, where an antagonist will produce effects of subminimal activation.) Finally there is is a partial agonist which stabilizes the receptor population in a state of partial activation; some receptors are active and some are not. Buprenorphine is a Bentley opioid. Derived from thebaine with an epoxide bridge these compounds are super potent (etorphine used in the show Dexter is another case of a Bentley opioid; it is mainly used to immobilize large animals.) The thing about buprenorphine is that it's high affinity is combined with a low efficacy- it is a partial agonist. This means that when a full agonist opioid is administered before buprenorphine it's effects will be to displace the first opioid from the receptors and bind in their place. What happens is a precipitated withdrawal in the same manner of naloxone caused by rapidly decreasing activation of the mu opioid system.