Almost 16 percent of college students say they misuse prescription stimulants, often in the quest for better grades, a new survey of U.S. undergraduate, graduate and professional students has found.
Dr. Chinazo Cunningham, M.D., M.S., a New York City-based expert in opioid use disorder will serve on a national board advising the CDC on best approaches to address the nation's opioid epidemic.
A small study shows that business managers and staff—such as those running coffee shops and fast-food restaurants—can be trained to reverse opioid overdoses, which are known to occur in public bathrooms.
A new study explores the mystery of what drives eating past the point of fullness, at the most basic level in the brain. It shows that two tiny clusters of cells battle for control of feeding behavior -- and the one that drives eating overpowers the one that says to stop. It also shows that the brain’s own natural opioid system gets involved – and that blocking it with the drug naloxone can stop over-eating.
Death rates from drug overdoses in the U.S. have been on an exponential growth curve that began at least 15 years before the mid-1990s surge in opioid prescribing, suggesting that overdose death rates may continue along this same historical growth trajectory for years to come.
The American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) applauds the Senate for the passage of the Opioid Crisis Response Act (“OCRA”), a bill that includes several bipartisan provisions supported by ASA that will help address the nation’s ongoing opioid abuse epidemic. In particular, ASA commends the Senate for the inclusion of the provision that would provide technical assistance and grants to hospitals and other acute care settings on alternatives to opioids for pain management. This will support the development of best practices on the use of alternatives to opioids; technologies or techniques to identify patients at risk for opioid use disorder; disseminating information on the use of alternatives to opioids; and collecting data and reporting on health outcomes associated with the use of alternatives to opioids. ASA was pleased to coordinate with policymakers on this concept.
A study in Nature Biomedical Engineering shows that skin stem cells, modified via CRISPR and transplanted back to donor mice, can protect addicted mice from cocaine-seeking and overdose.
A study by researchers at Rutgers Brain Health Institute identifies a promising avenue for treating addiction and clues to why people in recovery relapse
To protect the public from harmful products, legal action can be used against industries, one example of which—a settlement with the tobacco industry—offers useful lessons for confronting several of today’s public health epidemics.
Among older Americans, the poorest are the most likely to have used prescription opioids, according to a University at Buffalo study providing new insights into unexplored contours of the opioid crisis.
The study also raises important questions about access to pain management options for the disadvantaged in the current climate of the opioid epidemic.
People who use drugs in New York City have adjusted their behaviors to avoid overdose, finds a study by the Center for Drug Use and HIV/HCV Research at NYU.
They may start as well-intentioned efforts to calm anxiety, improve sleep or ease depression. But prescriptions for sedatives known as benzodiazepines may lead to long-term use among one in four older adults who receive them, according to new research. That’s despite warnings against long-term use of these drugs, especially among older people.
A new review explores how improved safety screening strategies and methods are improving the pharmaceutical discovery and development process. The authors outline several fundamental methods of the current drug screening processes and emerging techniques and technologies that promise to improve molecule selection. In addition, the authors discuss integrated screening strategies and provide examples of advanced screening paradigms.
Marijuana use is becoming more prevalent among middle-aged and older adults, with 9 percent of adults aged 50-64 and nearly 3 percent of adults 65 and older reporting marijuana use in the past year, according to a study by researchers at NYU School of Medicine and the Center for Drug Use and HIV/HCV Research (CDUHR) at NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing.
Addictions nursing specialists have a unique role to play in caring for patients, families, and communities affected by the crisis. A series of original research and expert commentaries provide the nursing specialist's perspective on the opioid crisis, appearing in the July/September special issue of Journal of Addictions Nursing (JAN), the official journal of the International Nurses Society on Addictions (IntNSA). The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.
Researchers at The University of Alabama are bringing together their expertise in geography, modeling and criminal activity to better understand how enforcement activity influences drug trafficking in Central America.
Teens are more prone to addiction because it’s a form of learning. Just as it’s easier for a younger brain to pick up new languages, athletic techniques, or musical instruments, it’s easier for them to pick up addictions.
With the support of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, scientists at Wake Forest School of Medicine have been working to find a safe, non-addictive pain killer to help fight the current opioid crisis in this country.
Single-step nasal spray naloxone is the easiest to deliver, according to new research led by faculty at Binghamton University, State University at New York.
The opioid crisis has made physicians increasingly wary about prescribing the potentially addictive drugs to their patients in pain. But there is a silver lining – experts in pain medicine, such as physician anesthesiologists, can create individualized pain management plans that include alternatives to opioids that are safer and often work better.
To better understand how much marijuana or constituent compounds actually get into breast milk and how long it remains, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine conducted a study, publishing online August 27 in Pediatrics.
Cynthia Connolly’s, PhD, RN, FAAN, book, Children and Drug Safety: Balancing Risk and Protection in Twentieth Century America, just received the distinguished Arthur J. Viseltear Prize. This award is given each year by the American Public Health Association (APHA) to a historian who has made outstanding contributions to the history of public health, either through a body of scholarship or through a recent book (published within the previous two years).
The increase of opioid overdose deaths in rural communities across the country has far outpaced the overdose rate in urban areas, and a team of researchers wants to know why. The goal is to identify prevention strategies and use big data to predict which communities may be at risk.
Christiana Care has reduced opioids prescriptions by 40 percent after some ob-gyn and general surgery procedures, by almost 50 percent for patients discharged from the emergency department and by 37 percent for primary care patients.
Nicole O’Donnell says her first love was benzodiazepines. Now, 2 overdoses and nearly a decade of sobriety later, the mother of two is working towards a bachelor's degree in Psychology and is using her personal journey to make a difference in the lives of those struggling with addiction.
At a time when drug overdoses are becoming more prevalent and lethal, a new report provides a snapshot of regional illicit drug use and, for the first time, highlights the complexity of detecting and treating patients at hospital emergency departments for a severe drug-related event.
A drug policy researcher is proposing changes to the Multi-Criteria Drug Harm Scale, which informs European drug policies. The changes focus on addressing use and abuse separately, collecting input from a broader range of stakeholders, and targeting substance-specific experts for drug review panels.
America’s drug problem may be even worse than officials realize. And illicit drugs are consumed at a higher rate during celebratory events. Those are just two of the conclusions scientists have drawn from recent studies of drug residues in sewage.
A new opioid misuse prevention program called ONE Rx was announced by pharmacy and health care partners in North Dakota. This continuing education program for pharmacists at community pharmacies moves opioid misuse and overdose prevention to the initial patient encounter, increasing awareness when patients first fill an opioid prescription.
A Johns Hopkins expert panel of health care providers and patients have announced what is, to their knowledge, the nation’s first set of operation-specific opioid prescribing guidelines. The guidelines are based on the premise that opioid prescribing limits should be based on the operation performed rather than a blanket approach. The ranges offered for each of 20 common operations generally call for reductions from the current rates of opioid prescription, and the researchers say that patients themselves favor using less of the drugs than physicians often prescribe.
“Safe consumption sites,” where people can use pre-obtained drugs with medically trained personnel on hand to treat overdoses, garner higher public support when they are called “overdose prevention sites,” according to a study led by researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
A pesar de la mayor atención puesta sobre el abuso de los opioides, su prescripción continúa relativamente igual para muchos pacientes estadounidenses, descubrió un estudio dirigido por investigadores de Mayo Clinic.
ROCHESTER, Minn. – Despite increased attention to opioid abuse, prescriptions have remained relatively unchanged for many U.S. patients, research led by Mayo Clinic finds. The research, published in The BMJ, shows that opioid prescription rates have remained flat for commercially insured patients over the past decade. Rates for some Medicare patients are leveling but remain above where they were 10 years ago.
As the national opioid epidemic continues to take its toll, the 126th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association will include a variety of sessions focused on how psychologists can help people with opioid dependence and addiction. Following is a list of relevant sessions.
A neuroscientist from FAU has been conducting ground-breaking work on the basic mechanisms and the biochemical basis of chronic pain and drug addiction that have opened new avenues of research and identified novel drug targets to address both of these widespread disorders.
Ortho Clinical Diagnostics, a global leader of in vitro diagnostics, announced an international distribution and co-promotion agreement with Thermo Fisher Scientific to provide 14 assays used to monitor therapeutic drugs, immunosuppressive drugs and drugs of abuse.
Nearly a third of older adults have received a prescription for an opioid pain medicine in the past two years, but a new poll shows many didn’t get enough counseling about the risks that come with them, how to reduce use, when to switch to a non-opioid, or what to do with leftovers. Nearly three-quarters support limits on how many opioids a doctor can prescribe at once.
Published in Addiction, a new paper lays out some of the factors that lead policymakers to look for easy answers to complex problems related to opioid addiction.
The study compared the performance of weekly and monthly CAM2038, with the current standard of care, a daily sublingual dose of buprenorphine/naloxone. Results showed the drug’s non-inferiority on the primary responder rate outcome, which was based upon highly sensitive urine testing detecting illicit opioids. The data suggests that injectable buprenorphine is efficacious and may have advantages.
UK researcher Don Helme is partnering with the Kentucky Attorney General’s office to gauge public opinion on a new drug deactivation pouch, part of a larger effort to develop solutions to the state’s opioid epidemic. Four counties have received Deterra, the deactivation pouch.
Based at West Virginia University’s Eastern Campus in Martinsburg, Joy Buck, a WVU School of Nursing professor, and her collaborators will gather real-time data about overdose trends and assess the cultural barriers to—and facilitators of—overdose prevention. The findings gleaned from her pilot project may prove useful in other rural areas across the nation.