Effect of Medicinal plants in the treatment of opioid addiction; Review of Laboratory Studies

Addiction is a chronic and relapsing disease. Relapse phenomenon in addiction treatment is the most important challenge. In spite of high efficacy of synthetic drugs recent studies have shown that they are often associated with unpleasant and undesirable side effects. Additionally current treatments have little effect in addiction treatment. Medicinal plants contain natural effective materials with lower costs and fewer side effects can be effective in the treatment of different stages of addiction. Since experimental studies are the basis for human studies. Thus, the aim of this study is to review the use of medicinal plants in the treatment of addiction in laboratory animals. In this review, all relevant original research papers and articles in physiology Research Center, Semnan University of Medical Sciences have been published in prestigious journals were analyzed. Up to now, very few scientific studies on the effects of medicinal plants in reducing withdrawal symptoms in humans have been conducted. Therefore, the results of this study on laboratory animals showed that medicinal plants can affect the body's biochemical functions and psyche, behavior, emotions and other addicts problems and be also effective in reducing the symptoms of withdrawal and addiction treatment to. The results of this study indicated that the plants can be effective to control deprivation, reduction of dependence development and probably in detoxifying in rats.