Cutting-Edge Search for Safer Opioid Pain Relief: Retrospective Review of Salvinorin A and Its Analogs.
Frontiers in psychiatry January 1, 2019 Jordan K Zjawiony, Antônio S Machado, Ricardo Menegatti et al. 18 citations
Pain reduces quality of life, health, and economic well-being. Opioids are effective analgesics but cause side effects and have contributed to an overuse crisis, prompting the search for new pain treatments. This review examines salvinorin A and its analogs, focusing on their structural and pharmacological profiles as a basis for developing safer analgesics. Ethnopharmacological reports and preclinical data show antinociceptive effects of salvinorin A and some analogs. Analogs modified at the C-2 position dominate the literature. Binding affinity correlates with chemical structure and in vivo effects. Salvinorin A's susceptibility to chemical modification makes it a valuable tool for probing cellular mechanisms and developing promising analgesic analogs, though more research is needed to confirm therapeutic potential.