Heroin News and Research

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Heroin is a very addictive chemical called diacetylmorphine. Heroin is a modified form of morphine, a highly abundant opium derived from the seedpods of the poppy plant.

California’s fentanyl problem is getting worse

California has allocated more than $1 billion in recent years to combat its opioid crisis. Much of the money has been used to distribute fentanyl test strips and the overdose reversal drug naloxone, as well as deliver medical care to people who are homeless.

23 May 2023

New Jersey's Medicaid reforms spurred increases in buprenorphine prescriptions to combat opioid addiction

Reforms to New Jersey's Medicaid program successfully spurred ongoing increases in buprenorphine prescriptions for the treatment of opioid addiction, according to a Rutgers analysis.

19 May 2023

Legal pot is more potent than ever — and still largely unregulated

Marijuana and other products containing THC, the plant's main psychoactive ingredient, have grown more potent and more dangerous as legalization has made them more widely available.

9 May 2023

New research to measure the impact of overdose prevention centers in the United States

NYU Langone Health and Brown University's School of Public Health today announced a grant award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health, to conduct research to measure the impact of some of the first publicly recognized overdose prevention centers (OPCs) in the United States, located in New York City and Providence, Rhode Island.

8 May 2023

Researchers identify a potential safer route to pain relief

Strategies to treat pain without triggering dangerous side effects such as euphoria and addiction have proven elusive.

4 May 2023

Pain, hope, and science collide as athletes turn to magic mushrooms

The boxer felt broken. Every day, he was waking up in pain. Some days, it was debilitating headaches. Other times, it was his back. Or his fists. His ribs. His nose. On top of that, he had mood swings. Depression. Anxiety.

24 Apr 2023

MIP Discovery announces drugs of abuse reagent launch

MIP Discovery, a leader in rationally designed detection reagents based on its proprietary nanoMIP technology, in response to the growing synthetic opioid crisis has announced the launch of its first drugs of abuse products which are able to recognize norfentanyl, the main urinary metabolite of fentanyl.

From MIP Discovery 4 Apr 2023

Buprenorphine can be safely started in the ER without triggering withdrawal even for people using stronger opioids

Results from a multi-site clinical trial supported by the National Institutes of Health showed that less than 1% of people with opioid use disorder whose drug use includes fentanyl experienced withdrawal when starting buprenorphine in the emergency department.

30 Mar 2023

Study reveals dramatic rise in drug overdose fatalities among older adults in the past two decades

Overdose mortality among people age 65 and older quadrupled over 20 years, suggesting the need for greater mental health and substance use disorder policies addressed at curbing the trend, a new research paper finds.

29 Mar 2023

CBD-based compounds boost the effects of naloxone

There's been a recent push in the U.S. to make naloxone -; a fast-acting opioid antidote -; available without a prescription.

28 Mar 2023

Reentry programs to help former prisoners obtain health care are often underused

When Matthew Boyd was released from a Georgia state prison in December 2020, officials sent him home without medicines he uses to manage chronic heart and lung conditions and high blood pressure, he said.

8 Mar 2023

Determining the role of the epigenetic enzyme, HDAC5, in an animal model

Substance use disorder (SUD) is an extremely difficult disorder to overcome, and many individuals with SUD return to regular use after repeated attempts to quit.

27 Feb 2023

Study finds fiftyfold increase in U.S. methamphetamine mortality rate between 1999 and 2021

The U.S. methamphetamine mortality rate increased fiftyfold between 1999 and 2021, with most of the added deaths also involving heroin or fentanyl, researchers report in the American Journal of Public Health.

20 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

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

Study finds spike in endocarditis among patients with cocaine or opioid use disorder from 2011 to 2022

The incidence rate of infective endocarditis - a rare but often fatal inflammation of the heart valves - among patients with cocaine use disorder or opioid use disorder increased from 2011 to 2022, with the steepest increase occurring from 2021 to 2022, a new study reports.

13 Dec 2022