Three heroin/opiate abuse populations were used for this study. The first consisted of human brain samples from a predominant heroin abuse postmortem collection consisting of Caucasian Swedish and Hungarian subjects that has been previously described.5 Briefly, these subjects were collected at the National Institute of Forensic Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden, as well as from the Department of Forensic Medicine at Semmelweis University, Hungary. We studied 127 Caucasian subjects: 46 controls (36 males, 10 females; average age 37.2±14.4) which had negative blood toxicology for opiates and other illicit substances and 81 heroin users (67 males, 14 females; average age 25.7±5.4) with cause of death identified as heroin intoxication (blood and urine toxicology assessment), documented abuse history from police, medical and family reports as well as physical signs of heroin abuse (needle track marks). For opiate dependent subjects, the only other substance of positive use was alcohol (23%); for controls, alcohol (15%). Of these, 53 specimens were used for brain expression analyses [see5]: controls, 16 male, 3 female, average age 34.2±12.4 years, average brain pH 6.72±0.05; heroin, 30 males, 4 females, average age 27±5.3, average brain pH 6.55±0.04.
