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Study: UnityPhilly app can help fight America's opioid crisis

Equipped with naloxone and a smartphone app, community members can save lives in the fight against America's opioid crisis, according to a paper from researchers at Drexel University's Dornsife School of Public Health and colleagues published this week in The Lancet journal EClinicalMedicine.

6 Aug 2020

Drug overdoses can lead to PTSD symptoms

Drug overdoses are psychologically traumatic events that can lead to symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), according to a study focused on female sex workers in Baltimore City that was led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

5 Aug 2020

Smartphone alert can aid laypersons in opioid overdose reversal

Without timely reversal, opioid overdose causes respiratory depression that may deteriorate into apnea, leading to brain injury and even death.

3 Aug 2020

NIDA funding allows Temple scientists to continue critical substance abuse research

Substance abuse is a major public health problem in the United States, with some 21 million Americans diagnosed with at least one substance use disorder.

27 Jul 2020

Increased access to MOUD in prisons and jails is associated with lower overdose rate

The epidemic of opioid-related overdose death persists across the United States, and people released from jails and prisons are at particular risk.

23 Jul 2020

Behavior therapy that exposes people to traumatic memories does not trigger drug relapse

About a quarter of people with drug or alcohol use disorders also suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which is typically caused by a traumatic or stressful life event such as rape or combat, and which leaves the person with intense anxiety.

20 Jul 2020

Cannabis could be a potentially effective treatment for sickle cell disease pain

Cannabis appears to be a safe and potentially effective treatment for the chronic pain that afflicts people with sickle cell disease, according to a new clinical trial co-led by University of California, Irvine researcher Kalpna Gupta and Dr. Donald Abrams of UC San Francisco. The findings appear in JAMA Network Open.

17 Jul 2020

Many private post-acute care facilities explicitly discriminate patients with substance use disorder

A new study shows that 29 percent of private post-acute care facilities in Massachusetts explicitly discriminated against hospitalized individuals with opioid use disorder, rejecting their referral for admission.

16 Jul 2020

People in affluent neighborhoods drink alcohol more frequently, study finds

People in wealthier neighborhoods drink alcohol twice as frequently as people in poorer areas, suggests a new study from the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health and the Prevention Research Center of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation.

13 Jul 2020

HCV testing and treatment at federally qualified health centers can be cost-fffective

New research from Boston Medical Center shows that routine Hepatitis C (HCV) testing at federally qualified health centers improves diagnosis rates and health outcomes for people with HCV infections in the United States, and is cost-effective.

8 Jul 2020

NIH study: Long-acting form of HIV prevention drug more effective than daily oral pill

A pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) regimen containing an investigational long-acting form of the HIV drug cabotegravir injected once every 8 weeks was more effective than daily oral Truvada at preventing HIV acquisition among cisgender men who have sex with men and transgender women who have sex with men in a clinical trial sponsored by the National Institutes of Health.

7 Jul 2020

Study may help develop better treatment strategies for cannabis dependence

Researchers at Center for BrainHealth, part of The University of Texas at Dallas, recently examined underlying brain networks in long-term cannabis users to identify patterns of brain connectivity when the users crave or have a desire to consume cannabis.

2 Jul 2020

New program aims to prevent prescription drug use among high school students

George Mason University Professor Dr. Kenneth W. Griffin, received $156,581 from National Health Promotion Associates for a project aimed at preventing prescription drug use among high school students.

1 Jul 2020

MIT engineers create a focused approach to imaging neural activity

When neurons fire an electrical impulse, they also experience a surge of calcium ions. By measuring those surges, researchers can indirectly monitor neuron activity, helping them to study the role of individual neurons in many different brain functions.

26 Jun 2020

Temple researchers receive $1.77M grant to explore therapy for cocaine addiction

Cocaine is a highly addictive drug - some people are unable to walk away from it after just one use. And once addicted, users can lose control of their lives.

15 Jun 2020

Opioid addiction treatment has increased for all age groups except the youngest

Prescriptions for an FDA-approved treatment for opioid addiction have increased over the past decade in all age groups except the youngest (age 15-24), a new analysis of prescription data by researchers at Columbia University Irving Medical Center has found.

4 Jun 2020

New risk genes for problematic alcohol use discovered

Do you have what is known as problematic alcohol use? Then statistically you will also be particularly genetically predisposed to develop e.g. depression and insomnia. And to become dependent on drugs and tobacco. This is shown by a new international study in which researchers from iPSYCH are involved.

4 Jun 2020

Stanford researchers develop optical technique to show how decisions light up the brain

When we make even simple decisions about how to interact with the world, we rely on computations performed by networks of neurons that span our brains. But what exactly are these neural networks computing?

2 Jun 2020

Study: High estrogen levels may influence alcohol use disorder

A new study from researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago shows that high estrogen levels may make alcohol more rewarding to female mice.