Dihydromorphine
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Dihydromorphine is a semi-synthetic opioid invented in Germany in the first years of the twentieth century. It is most often seen these days as an intermediate in the manufacture of dihydrocodeine as well as in some methods of manufacture of hydrocodone, hydromorphone, and related drugs. It can be made by hydrogenating morphine or opium or by demthylating either dihydrocodeine or tetrahydothebaine. It is available as the hydrochloride, hydroiodide, or monhydrate salt, with the former being the form almost exclusively used in pharmaceuticals but the hydroiodide also used especially in making dihydrocodeine hydroiodide (Paracodin).
Known as Paramorfan and DHM, it was never introduced in the United States as was the case of many similar drugs invented in Europe in the intense search for stronger cough suppressants, especially to slow the spread of tuberculosis and other airborne diseases in the two decades prior to the First World War such as thebacon, nicomorphine (Vilan), benzylmorphine (Peronine), dihydroisocodeine, dihydrocodeine enol acetate (Acedicon), acetylmorphone, diacetylmorphine (Heroin), nicocodeine, acetyldihydrocodeine, nicodicodeine, and others.. For this reason, dihydromorphine shares a Schedule I designation under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 with these other opioids in the United States. In most other countries, dihydromorphine is classified at the same level as morphine, pethidine and the like where it is available and used; international law and treaties list it as a narcotic subject to control, and other countries' laws may vary. Its rôle in the production of dihydrocodeine makes it the Schedule I substance with one of the higher annual manufacturing quotas granted by the US Drug Enforcement Administration.
Dihydromorphine, according to various sources is either 50 per cent or 115-120 per cent of the analgesic strength of morphine, (in comparison, dihydrocodeine is 1½ times the strength of codeine but also differs from codeine in not having a ceiling effect on analgesia imposed by metabolusm -- i.e. above a certain point, 400 mg is most people, the codeine is wasted) Dihydromorphine has a longer duration of action (6 hours against 4 hours for morphine).
Dihydromorphine, often labelled with the isotopes iodine-129 and tritium, was amongst tools utilised in the twentieth century research which eventually led to the theory and discovery of opioid receptors in the human nervous system, Other opioids like buprenorphine, morphine and others are similarly used for research on the actions of drugs of this type in various systems of the body.
The human liver converts a percentage of dihydrocodeine and perhaps minuscule quantities of hydrocodone into dihydromorphine. The liver enzymes of the Cytochrome P 450 II-D-6 series accomplish this feat in a way similar to which the liver activates codeine by demethylating it to morphine, (also, hydrocodone to hydromorphone, oxycodone to oxymorphone nicocodeine to nicomorphine and so on)
Other derivates or analogues of Dihydromorphine are the dihydrocodeine-related family of moderate painkillers and effective cough suppressants (thebacon, nicocodeine, acetyldihydrocodeine, nicodicodeine, and others.)
