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From Uber vouchers to patient advocates: What it takes to increase ER addiction treatment

For years, Kayla West watched the opioid epidemic tear through her eastern Tennessee community. As a psychiatric nurse practitioner, she treated people with mental illness but felt she needed to do more to address addiction.

25 Aug 2021

Study suggests a balanced approach to developing safer opioid analgesics

Opioids are powerful painkillers but their use is hindered because patients become tolerant to them, requiring higher and higher doses, and overdoses can cause respiratory depression and death.

24 Aug 2021

Study finds significant increase in opioid-associated cardiac arrests

A nationwide US study has shown that the rate of opioid-related cardiac arrests has steeply risen and is now on par with the rate of cardiac arrest from other causes. The research is presented at ESC Congress 2021.

23 Aug 2021

Researchers use residues in wastewater to study illicit drug consumption

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, stay-at-home orders and other restrictions drastically affected how people lived and worked, resulting in social isolation and economic instability. Now, researchers show that some people turned to a variety of drugs for relief. Using wastewater analysis, the team identified a spike in consumption of easily abused prescription opioids and anti-anxiety sedatives, while some illicit drug use plummeted, between March and June 2020.

23 Aug 2021

Children and young adults are frequently exposed to unsafe opioid prescriptions, study suggests

Children and young adults who have pain from surgery, dental care and other conditions are often prescribed opioids.

19 Aug 2021

New AHA Presidential Advisory addresses opioid use and its effects on heart and brain health

The misuse of opioids in the United States continues to lead to high rates of dependency as well as a staggering number of deaths due to overdose.

19 Aug 2021

Contingency management at end-of-treatment helps to overcome opioid use disorder

The opioid epidemic remains a U.S. public health crisis and has only worsened since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, with opioid deaths accounting for 69,000 of 93,000 overdose-related deaths in 2020, according to provisional drug overdose data released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in July 2021.

5 Aug 2021

Research documents the existing models of care for patients with opioid use disorder

Data show that concurrent with the opioid overdose crisis, there has been an increase in hospitalizations of people with opioid use disorder (OUD).

4 Aug 2021

Study shows increased risk of overdose and mental health crisis following opioid dose tapering

Opioid therapy is complex. In recent years, a rise in opioid-related deaths and changing prescribing guidelines and regulatory policies have led many physicians to reduce daily doses for patients prescribed stable opioid therapy for chronic pain.

3 Aug 2021

As holdout Missouri joins nation in monitoring opioid prescriptions, experts worry

Kathi Arbini said she felt elated when Missouri finally caught up to the other 49 states and approved a statewide prescription drug monitoring program this June in an attempt to curb opioid addiction.

26 Jul 2021

Study reflects shortcomings in how the U.S. handles care for people with opioid addiction

As opioid overdose deaths rose during the COVID-19 pandemic, people seeking treatment for opioid addiction had to wait nearly twice as long to begin methadone treatment in the United States than in Canada, a new Yale study has shown.

23 Jul 2021

Taking "z-drugs" with opioids increases risk of death

A new study by Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers of more the 400,000 Medicare patients taking medications for insomnia found that the risk of death is increased when either benzodiazepines or "z-drugs" are taken with opioids.

16 Jul 2021

Researchers examine the effect of silicon intake on lung morphology of rodents

Bone density, skin and hair health, and the mobility of joints depend to a great extent on the microelement of silicon.

15 Jul 2021

How ERs fail patients with addiction: One patient’s tragic death

Jameson Rybak tried to quit using opioids nearly a dozen times within five years. Each time, he'd wait out the vomiting, sweating and chills from withdrawal in his bedroom.

15 Jul 2021

Study highlights burden of methamphetamine-associated heart failure hospitalizations in California

Heart failure hospitalizations and costs related to methamphetamine use jumped sharply over a decade in California, according to new research published today in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, an American Heart Association journal.

14 Jul 2021

Canadians with a history of drug dependence more likely to have mental illness, finds study

New research published online in the International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction found that Canadians with a history of drug dependence are much less likely to have flourishing mental health and are more likely to have mental illness.

14 Jul 2021

California lawmakers push feds to allow a therapy that pays meth users to abstain

In his multiple attempts to overcome a methamphetamine addiction that ground through two decades of his life, Tyrone Clifford Jr. remembers well the closest he came. "The most success I had," he said, "is when my dealer was in jail."

2 Jul 2021

Sunflower peptide identified as a potential drug for treating abdominal pain

A naturally occurring peptide in sunflower seeds was synthetically optimised and has now been identified as a potential drug for treating abdominal pain or inflammation (in the gastrointestinal tract, abdominal area and/or internal organs).

28 Jun 2021

Black and Hispanic Americans suffer most in biggest US decline in life expectancy since WWII

Although James Toussaint has never had covid, the pandemic is taking a profound toll on his health.

24 Jun 2021

Testing several genes can provide precise knowledge about the choice of right medicinal products

Most of us have genetic variations that increase the risk of medicinal products not being effective. In order to provide a more effective treatment with fewer side effects, we need to analyse more of these genetic variations.

22 Jun 2021