Campbell/Spillane Substance Use Research - Interview with William (Bill) Dewey

Abstract

Sources: William L. Dewey, PhD, is Professor and Chair of the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology at Virginia Commonwealth University and a recipient of The College on Problems of Drug Dependence Nathan B. Eddy Award. Dr. Dewey’s research led him and a team of researchers to find an effective treatment for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), which stemmed from his work with drug dependency. It began in the 1980s when his friend and colleague, Dr. Ed Myer, pediatric neurologist at the Medical College of Virginia, told Dewey about the children he was caring for who were at risk for SIDS. Every year 7,000 babies were dying of SIDS. Babies who were most at risk for SIDS were born to parents addicted to drugs or alcohol or both; or kids whose parents had already lost one or more children to the mysterious respiratory repression disease. Dewey’s compassion for children and his experience with researching the effects of opiates made him a perfect candidate to help. He and a team of researchers figured out, by studying cerebral spinal fluid, that children at risk for SIDS had more endorphins than children who were not at risk. Dewey knew through his work with drug dependency that heroin released an excess amount of endorphins in the brain and that when a heroin user overdoses, it’s because he or she stops breathing. Thus, through years of research, his team discovered that naltrexone, a drug used to treat heroin overdoses, could be used to treat children at risk for SIDS, to prevent them from falling victim to the spontaneous breathing cessation that characterizes the disease. If it worked. Parents of children at risk for SIDS were finally able to sleep through the night when they had previously spent nights monitoring the breathing of their babies. Eventually, the scientific world discovered that children could sleep on their backs instead of on their stomachs to substantially reduce their risk for SIDS. There are also other respiratory repression diseases, such as Rhetts syndrome, that could be treated with naltrexone and benefit from Dewey and his team’s research. Sources: https://pharmtox.vcu.edu/about/our-team/william-l-dewey-phd.html Accessed 11 Mar 2023. http://www.people.vcu.edu/~jcsouth/masc404/student-work/dewey.htm Accessed 11 Mar 2023.