Substance Abuse News and Research

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RTI-led study seeks to improve retention rates, outcomes of patients in addiction treatment

From 2000 to 2015, more than a half million people died from drug overdoses. Many of these individuals tried to recover from their addiction by seeking treatment at specialty addiction programs.

5 Jan 2018

Pharmacists slow to dispense lifesaving overdose drug

Gale Dunham, a pharmacist in Calistoga, Calif., knows the devastation the opioid epidemic has wrought, and she is glad the anti-overdose drug naloxone is becoming more accessible.

3 Jan 2018

Short- and long-term ADHD medication users have lower risk of STIs, study finds

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) increases the risk of subsequent sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among adolescent and young adult populations by about three times, reports a study published in the January 2018 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

3 Jan 2018

Medicaid expansions for low-income parents can lead to expanded use of prenatal care

The Medicaid expansions for low-income parents that took place in 34 states between 1996 and 2011 led to a 2.3 percent decrease in the uninsured rate among women who already had a child and became pregnant again, and a 7.9 percent decrease in the number of mothers who didn't have insurance while they were pregnant.

28 Dec 2017

Children who experience abuse, adversity more likely to develop cardiovascular diseases in adulthood

Children and teens who are abused, witness violence, are bullied or face other adversities are more likely to develop cardiovascular diseases in adulthood, according to a new scientific statement by the American Heart Association published in the Association's journal Circulation.

18 Dec 2017

Telemedicine for addiction treatment? Picture remains fuzzy

When President Donald Trump declared the opioid epidemic a public health emergency, it came with a regulatory change intended to make it easier for people to get care. The declaration allows for doctors to prescribe addiction medicine virtually, without ever seeing the patient in person.

14 Dec 2017

Butler Hospital launches international Alzheimer's disease prevention study

The Memory and Aging Program at Butler Hospital, a member of Care New England and a major teaching affiliate of The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, enrolled one of the initial participants in an international Alzheimer's disease (AD) prevention study.

11 Dec 2017

Treating the new hep C generation on their turf

Once a week, Dr. Diana Sylvestre puts her medical expertise to use in a rickety old house frequented by drug users in this small Northern California city.

7 Dec 2017

Stopping opioid addiction at one key source: The hospital

It may not be rocket science, but a group of surgeons at the University of Michigan's Michigan Medicine have devised a strategy to curb the nation's opioid epidemic — starting at their own hospital.

6 Dec 2017

Parental attention can be protective factor to lower risk of drug abuse among adolescents

Parents who require children to follow rules and keep a constant eye on their activities, endeavoring to know where they are, who they are with and what they are doing, run less risk of facing problems when their children enter adolescence, such as abuse of alcohol and other drugs.

4 Dec 2017

Desperate for coverage: Are short-term plans better than none at all?

When one of Cindy Holtzman's clients told the Woodstock, Ga., broker he was considering dropping his Affordable Care Act plan because next year's cost approached $23,000 for his family of four, she suggested a new option: a back-to-back set of four, 90-day short-term plans, which would effectively give them a modicum of medical coverage for 2018.

1 Dec 2017

Review: Relationship among key determinants affecting mental health disorders of GMS people

ASEAN integration is likely to bring about a substantial change to this area in the new era; it can subsequently cause many problems as well.

30 Nov 2017

Review: Program produces positive results for offenders with mental health or addiction issues

A review of a state program launched two years ago to improve recovery and reduce recidivism among felony offenders who have mental health or addiction issues shows the program is producing positive results.

30 Nov 2017

Doctors make big money testing urine for drugs, then ignore abnormal results

In April 2014, state and federal drug agents raided Jeffrey Campbell's medical clinic in Jeffersonville, Ind. Police cars blocked the parking lot as bewildered patients scattered and the agents carted off boxes of records from the doctor's office.

29 Nov 2017

Medicaid coverage for methadone could improve outcomes for pregnant women with OUD

Pregnant women with opioid use disorder (OUD) are more likely to receive evidence-based treatment with an "opioid agonist"- usually methadone- in states where those medications are covered by Medicaid, reports a study in the December issue of Medical Care, published by Wolters Kluwer.

14 Nov 2017

Taking a page from pharma’s playbook to fight the opioid crisis

Dr. Mary Meengs remembers the days, a couple of decades ago, when pharmaceutical salespeople would drop into her family practice in Chicago, eager to catch a moment between patients so they could pitch her a new drug.

14 Nov 2017

Neighborhood's quality has long-term effects on child and adolescent problem behaviors

The quality of the neighborhood where a child grows up has a significant impact on the number of problem behaviors they display during elementary and teenage years, a study led by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health researchers suggests.

9 Nov 2017

New inpatient program can be powerful tool to close gap in addiction treatment

A new program at Boston Medical Center's Grayken Center for Addiction is showing that connecting patients to addiction treatment when they are hospitalized for other conditions can be a powerful tool in closing a gap in addiction treatment.

8 Nov 2017

Increasing prevalence of chronic conditions linked to adverse health outcomes for moms and newborns

Pregnant women today are more likely to have chronic conditions that could cause life-threatening complications than at any other time in the past decade – particularly poor women and those living in rural communities, a new Michigan Medicine study suggests.