New, nationally projectable survey results released today by The Partnership at Drugfree.org and MetLife Foundation confirmed that one in four teens has misused or abused a prescription (Rx) drug at least once in their lifetime - a 33 percent increase over the past five years.
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Ameritox, one of the nation's leaders in pain medication monitoring, announced new research today showing a correlation between positive marijuana tests and higher rates of potential prescription drug non-adherence among chronic pain medication users.
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President Obama will release his overdue budget on Wednesday. It will doubtless project a reduction in the federal budget deficit-;a projection that journalists, commentators and policy makers should ignore.
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The numbers are staggering. More than 632 million people worldwide suffer from low back pain, and it is a leading cause of disability. According to the Institute of Medicine, one-third of all Americans suffer from chronic pain, which exceeds the number of people who are affected by heart disease, diabetes and cancer combined.
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Those governors who earlier embraced ObamaCare's Medicaid expansion-;here's looking at you, Jan Brewer-;might be feeling a little cheated. If only they had held out a bit longer, they might have been able to obtain something from the Obama administration in return, as Florida's Rick Scott purports to have done.
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Low testosterone levels occur five times more often among men who take long-acting instead of short-acting opioids for chronic pain, according to a new Kaiser Permanente study published in The Clinical Journal of Pain.
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Despite data on rising rates of abuse and overdoses of narcotic pain medicines across all age groups, in a new poll from the University of Michigan, most parents said they are not very concerned about misuse of these medicines by children and teens.
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Continued high use of marijuana by the nation's eighth, 10th and 12th graders combined with a drop in perceptions of its potential harms was revealed in this year's Monitoring the Future survey, an annual survey of eighth, 10th, and 12th-graders conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan.
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A new study by the University of Colorado Denver reveals that today's adolescents are abusing prescription pain medications like vicodin, valium and oxycontin at a rate 40 percent higher than previous generations.
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Nektar Therapeutics announced today that positive data from the first single-ascending dose Phase 1a clinical study of NKTR-192, the company's novel short-acting mu-opioid analgesic candidate, demonstrate that the drug candidate achieved its target pharmacokinetic profile.
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Texas authorities are investigating whether Xerox Corp. played a role in allowing dentists to allegedly overbill the state's Medicaid system by millions of dollars.
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Long-term use and abuse of opioid painkillers, such as OxyContin and Vicodin, has markedly increased in the United States in the last two decades. Of note, prescription opioids constitute 86.9 percent of prescription drug misuse among high school students. And last week in a two-day U.S. Food and Drug Administration public meeting, officials questioned the use of long-term opioids for chronic pain due to a lack of evidence for the effectiveness and concerns about the potential risk for addiction.
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Pisgah Laboratories, Inc. received Notice of Allowance from the United States Patent and Trademark Office for its patent application entitled "Opioid Salts and Formulations Exhibiting Anti-Abuse and Anti-Dose Dumping Properties."
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A federal judge rejected a request by California prison officials Wednesday to regain control of inmate health care, which has been under court-supervised receivership for six years, and said the state must first show it can provide adequate medical treatment. ... The current receiver, Clark Kelso, has reported improvements in the prisons' medical staff and facilities, and said a "turnaround plan" he proposed for the system in 2008 is about 80 percent complete.
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Today's headlines include reports about various health-related measures currently on the move in Congress.
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Politico examines the relationship between industry-group PhRMA and congressional Republicans in the post-health-reform-debate landscape.
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In an effort to limit possible prescription narcotic misuse and dependence among its members, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts (BCBSMA) announced today that it is instituting enhanced safety measures on how it will cover the use of powerful pain killers.
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About one baby is born every hour addicted to opiate drugs in the United States, according to new research from University of Michigan physicians.
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News outlets report on the hazards -- both in the ER and in maternity wards -- being brought about by painkiller use and abuse.
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Today's health policy headlines include reports from the presidential campaign trail and from states on issues ranging from Massachusetts' payment reform to Idaho's scope-of-practices issues.
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