Endocrine Abstracts

Use of long-term opioid analgesia has increased significantly in the past decade and dependency on prescribed opioids has been described as a ‘public health emergency’ in the United States. Opioid analgesia may be associated with excess mortality when compared to other classes of analgesia used in chronic pain. Opioids exert a range of effects across the hypothalamic-pituitary axes, which are potentially dependent on the chronicity of exposure. The largest body of ev...