Overdose News and Research

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A call to action proposed for health providers to ensure widest distribution, easy availability of naloxone

In 2021, 100,306 Americans died from drug overdoses – a 28.5 percent increase from the prior year – with 75,673 attributed to opioids.

16 Feb 2023

As opioids mixed with animal tranquilizers arrive in Kensington, so do alarming health challenges

Many people living on the streets in Philadelphia's Kensington neighborhood — the largest open-air drug market on the East Coast — are in full-blown addiction, openly snorting, smoking, or injecting illicit drugs, hunched over crates or on stoops. Syringes litter sidewalks, and the stench of urine fouls the air.

15 Feb 2023

‘The country is watching’: California homeless crisis looms as Gov. Newsom eyes political future

Driving through the industrial outskirts of Sacramento, a stretch of warehouses, wholesale suppliers, truck centers, and auto repair shops northeast of downtown, it's hard to square California's $18 billion investment in homeless services with the roadside misery.

9 Feb 2023

Why two states remain holdouts on distracted driving laws

Max Herrick pulled over on the interstate near Harrisonville, Missouri, on a spring night in 2020 to offer antifreeze to a woman whose car had overheated.

6 Feb 2023

Some addiction treatment centers turn big profits by scaling back care

Near the end of his scheduled three-month stay at a rehab center outside Austin, Texas, Daniel McKegney was forced to tell his father in North Carolina that he needed more time and more money, he recently recalled.

31 Jan 2023

Buprenorphine-involved overdose deaths did not increase after implementation of prescribing flexibilities

The proportion of opioid overdose deaths involving buprenorphine, a medication used to treat opioid use disorder, did not increase in the months after prescribing flexibilities were put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study.

20 Jan 2023

Research provides a comprehensive structural framework to design safer pain-relieving drugs

In the continuing effort to improve upon opioid pain relievers, American and Chinese scientists used cryoEM technology to solve the detailed structures of the entire family of opioid receptors bound to their naturally occurring peptides.

18 Jan 2023

Low-cost intervention can make a difference to America's deadly overdose epidemic

There are no simple solutions to America's deadly overdose epidemic, which costs 100,000 lives each year and is erasing gains in life expectancy.

6 Jan 2023

During in-flight emergencies, Sometimes airlines’ medical kits fall short

In March, a Frontier Airlines flight was headed from Phoenix to Las Vegas when a female passenger stopped breathing. The flight attendant yelled in the cabin for help.

6 Jan 2023

Postoperative restrictive opioid protocols reduce long-term opioid use

Research at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center shows that putting a three-day limit on opioid prescriptions to treat surgical pain after hospital discharge reduces the number of patients who become chronic opioid users without compromising pain relief or recovery.

5 Jan 2023

NY docs are now required to prescribe naloxone to some patients on opioid painkillers

Without opioid painkillers to dull the ache in his knees and other joints, Arnold Wilson wouldn't be able to walk half a block. The 63-year-old former New York City nurse has crippling arthritis for which he takes OxyContin twice a day and oxycodone when he needs additional relief.

5 Jan 2023

History of COVID-19 increases risk of fatigue and other long COVID symptoms in adults and children

Researchers observe that COVID-19 patients were at an increased risk of developing certain conditions.

21 Dec 2022

HIV outbreak persists as officials push back against containment efforts

Brooke Parker has spent the past two years combing riverside homeless encampments, abandoned houses, and less traveled roads to help contain a lingering HIV outbreak that has disproportionately affected those who live on society's margins.

19 Dec 2022

NIH establishes research network to test harm reduction strategies in community settings

To address the overdose crisis in the United States, the National Institutes of Health has established a research network that will test harm reduction strategies in different community settings to inform efforts to help save lives.

16 Dec 2022

New chemical compound shows promise to reverse effects of potentially deadly drugs

Drug overdoses in the United States have risen sharply in the last two decades. Nearly 92,000 people died from overdoses of illegal drugs and prescription opioids in 2020 - more than five times the number of deaths in the year 2000 - and synthetic opioids like fentanyl are one of the main culprits.

16 Dec 2022

People with cocaine- and opioid-use disorders infected with COVID-19 have greater risk of endocarditis

People diagnosed with cocaine- and opioid-use disorders are more susceptible to developing endocarditis, a condition that damages the lining of the heart valves and chambers, according to research from the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health.

14 Dec 2022

Study shows benefits of decreasing opioid refills for hip and knee arthroplasty patients

Opioids are commonly prescribed to patients that are discharged after a total knee and hip arthroplasty. Patients are typically given larger prescriptions of opioids that can result in an excess of the medication in their home after recovery is over.

14 Dec 2022

In rural America, deadly costs of opioids outweigh the dollars tagged to address them

Tim Buck knows by heart how many people died from drug overdoses in his North Carolina county last year: 10. The year before it was 12 — an all-time high.

12 Dec 2022

Buprenorphine prescription remained constant during the first year of COVID-19 pandemic

The number of active prescriptions for the opioid disorder treatment drug buprenorphine remained constant during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the number of new prescriptions for the treatment was far below what would normally have been expected, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

7 Dec 2022

Self-service vending machine filled with harm reduction supplies helps prevent overdoses

More than 107,000 Americans died from drug overdose in 2021, highlighting the need for evidence-based interventions.

6 Dec 2022