Phd defense
Phd defense on 4th December 2015
Why does nearly 250 Danish drug addicts die every year? Is it because certain genetic variations cause a higher risk of dying from overdoses of either morphine or methadon or a combination?
Senior toxicologisk Dorte J. Christoffersen tries to answer this question by defending her phd-thesis on 4th December 2015 at 10.00 in room 19.308 in J.B. Winslows Vej 19, 5000 Odense C.
The Title of the thesis is ”The Pharmacogenetics of sudden death in heroin addiction”.
The project is carried out at the Institute of Forensic Medicine in cooperation with Department of Public Health, Research Unit of Clinical Pharmacology, SDU. The study investigates genetic variations in dead drug addicts, drug addicts in treatment with methadone and a group of volunteer healthy test persons. By including a control group of healthy test persons, it is possible to investigate whether a change in genetic variation among dead drug addicts is an expression for a genetic risk of dying of an overdose. The study is based on material collected from approx. 1200 test persons. In the future, this study may form the basis of developping a gene test before starting individual treatment of drug addicts, or prior to use methadone and morphine as pain treatment with for instance cancer patients.