Heroin News and Research

RSS

Heroin is a very addictive chemical called diacetylmorphine. Heroin is a modified form of morphine, a highly abundant opium derived from the seedpods of the poppy plant.

Family doctors in rural America tackle crisis of addiction and pain

Dr. Angela Gatzke-Plamann didn’t fully grasp her community’s opioid crisis until one desperate patient called on a Friday afternoon in 2016.

10 Jan 2020

Study: Less than 2% of people at risk for opioid overdose are prescribed life-saving drug

Only a tiny minority of people at risk for an opioid overdose actually are prescribed a drug that could save their lives, a new study suggests. And the odds of having a dose of the rescue drug were very low among some of the most at-risk groups, including those who had already survived a previous opioid overdose.

8 Jan 2020

MCOD data undercounts fatal overdose deaths induced by certain drugs

Fatal misuse of specific drugs is a bigger problem than federal statistics make them appear, especially in Florida.

7 Jan 2020

New spatiomolecular map may advance understanding of the brain's decision-making area

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have come one step closer toward understanding how the part of our brain that is central for decision-making and the development of addiction is organized on a molecular level.

26 Dec 2019

Gender-tailored treatment methods may help alleviate opioid crisis

Gender-tailored methods to address the harmful mental health effects of childhood adversity may help alleviate the current opioid crisis and make treatment more effective, concludes University of Massachusetts Amherst epidemiology researcher Elizabeth Evans in her latest research about opioid use disorder.

22 Dec 2019

Study finds increase in high-strength painkiller poisonings among children

The proportion of high-strength painkiller poisonings among children which result in emergency hospital admissions has increased, according to research published in the peer-reviewed journal Clinical Toxicology.

22 Dec 2019

Proportion of powerful painkiller poisonings among children has increased, shows study

20 Dec 2019

Vaping among teens doubles in a year says MTF report

The 45th Monitoring the Future (MTF) survey 2019 has revealed that teenagers are preferring e cigarettes more and more and there is an increased propensity of using nicotine and marijuana in their e cigarettes. The latest report titled, “Trends in Reported Marijuana Vaping among U.S. Adolescents, 2017-2019”, was released in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

18 Dec 2019

Study finds increased prevalence of marijuana and nicotine vaping among teens

Findings from the 2019 Monitoring the Future (MTF) survey demonstrate the appeal of vaping to teens, as seen in the increased prevalence of marijuana use as well as nicotine vaping.

18 Dec 2019

Contribution of suicide to opioid-related deaths may be overstated, study suggests

The study is the first to use national data on opioid overdose deaths between 2000 and 2017 to find out what share of these deaths in individuals age 15 and older were unintentional, due to suicide, or of undetermined intent.

17 Dec 2019

Bans restricting e-cigarette sales could do more harm than good, say experts

Bans and other policies restricting e-cigarette sales could do more public harm than good, according to a group of public-health, tobacco-policy and ethics experts.

13 Dec 2019

Quick and simple method for identifying illicit drugs in powdered mixtures

The composition of suspicious powders that may contain illicit drugs can be analyzed using a quick and simple method called magneto-Archimedes levitation, according to a new study published in the journal Angewandte Chemie.

11 Dec 2019

Study: Drug overdose deaths in the U.S. are actually multiple opioid epidemics

The United States is suffering from several different simultaneous opioid epidemics, rather than just a single crisis, according to an academic study of deaths caused by drug overdoses.

9 Dec 2019

Built for counterterrorism, this high-tech machine is now used to detect fentanyl

Sarah Mackin runs a cotton swab around the inside of a tiny plastic baggie that appears empty. She spreads whatever residue the swab picked up onto a test strip that resembles a Band-Aid, then slides the strip into a buzzing machine about the size of a boxed, take-home pie.

4 Dec 2019

Study reveals clue to preventing addiction relapse

With any addiction in which a user has successfully resisted a chemical, activity or substance, relapse is vexing. And with opioids, it's often deadly. Fatal overdoses following relapse from an opioid addiction is reaching epidemic proportions.

2 Dec 2019

Risk of opioid overdose rises after de-addiction treatment completion

A study from Columbia University reveals that patients, who have been successfully treated with buprenorphine for opioid addiction, are at a greater risk of overdose after completion of the treatment. The study was titled, “Acute care, prescription opioid use, and overdose following discontinuation of long-term buprenorphine treatment for opioid use disorder”, and was published in the latest issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry. This study was funded and supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

2 Dec 2019

Researchers uncover the binding mechanism of opioid receptor

Together with colleagues from Shanghai, Brussels, Canada and the USA, researchers from the University of Bonn have uncovered the binding mechanism of an important pain receptor.

27 Nov 2019

Patients qualifying for Medicare due to disability have higher rates of opioid overdose deaths

New findings from The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston show that patients qualifying for Medicare because of a disability have the highest rates of opioid overdose deaths compared with older Medicare beneficiaries and commercial insurance beneficiaries.

26 Nov 2019

Not yesterday’s cocaine: Death toll rising from tainted drug

A pain pill prescription for nerve damage revived Gwendolyn Barton's long-dormant addiction last year, awakening fears she would slip back into smoking crack cocaine.

25 Nov 2019

Fentanyl-involved overdoses are concentrated in resource-deprived neighborhoods

Fentanyl overdoses cluster geographically more than non-fentanyl overdoses, according to a study just released by Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

22 Nov 2019