Dear Colleagues,

Alcohol and opioid (such as heroin, morphine, and prescription pain relievers) abuses are serious global problems affecting the health, social, and economic welfare of all societies. In the United States, approximately 15.1 million adults ages 18 and older suffer alcohol abuse disorder. This includes 9.8 million men and 5.3 million women. It is also estimated that between 26.4 to 36 million people abuse opioids worldwide, of which an estimated 2.1 million people reside in the United. A unique aspect of alcoholism and opioid addiction is their comorbidity. People addicted to opioids often abuse alcohol and, concomitantly, alcoholics are more susceptible to abusing recreational or prescription opioids. Alcohol, when taken with opioids, increases central nervous system depression, thus increasing the risk for overdose. According to a report from Food Drug Administration (FDA), alcohol was involved in (i) 18.5% of opioids and 27.2% of benzodiazepine drug abuse-related Emergency visits and (ii) 22.1% of OPR and 21.4% of benzodiazepine drug-related deaths. These findings substantiate the contention that alcohol plays a significant role in opioid abuse and vice versa. Although mechanisms underlying the alcohol-opioid comorbidity is not fully understood, alcohol and opioids both may activate opioid receptors, inhibit GABA and dopamine signaling, and activate glutamate receptors. An understanding of the precise mechanisms of alcoholism and opioid addiction will help develop interventions to reduce the abuse of alcohol and opioids alone and in combination. Therefore, the aim of this Special Issue is to publish manuscripts in different aspects of alcoholism and opioid addiction. In general, manuscripts related to the following topics are being solicited.

• Global prevalence of alcoholism and opioid addiction
• Multifaceted mechanisms of alcohol and opioid addictions.
• Opioid-ethanol interaction: socio-psychological, mechanistic, addictive and clinical studies.
• Metabolism, pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of ethanol and opioids (external and/or internal peptides), alone or in combination.
• Current and future therapeutic (pharmacological, genomic, genetic, nano-therapeutic and stem cell mediated therapy) strategies against alcoholism and opioid addiction.
• Other topics related to addiction mechanisms and therapeutics.

Dr. Ashok K. Singh
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Biomedicines is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Alcoholism
• opioids
• addiction
• comorbidity
• opioid-ethanol interaction
• socio-psychology
• pharmacotherapy
• gene therapy
• stem cells
• brain mechanisms
• pharmacokinetics