OxyContin News and Research

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Rx Locker device to secure prescription medications

Due to the rising statistics about teens and prescription drug abuse, Dr. Drew Pinsky, host of Celebrity Rehab and Loveline, recently debuted the Rx Locker, a device designed to secure prescription medications within the home to restrict unauthorized access and prevent abuse.

7 Jan 2010

Woodcock discusses FDA's ongoing initiative to reduce preventable harm from medication use

An article by Janet Woodcock, M.D., director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, titled "A Difficult Balance - Pain Management, Drug Safety, and the FDA," appears in the Nov. 26, 2009 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.

5 Jan 2010

New study indicates growing number of people are abusing prescription painkillers

This entire year was marked by an abundance of media coverage and attention surrounding prescription painkillers, largely the result of widespread misuse throughout Hollywood.

24 Dec 2009

HSA survey reveals drug cost inflation in workers’ compensation is up by 7.5%

Drug cost inflation in workers’ compensation is up 7.5 percent according to Health Strategy Associates’ (HSA) Sixth Annual Survey of Prescription Drug Management in Workers’ Compensation.

10 Dec 2009

Deaths from opioid use in Ontario have doubled, according to new study

Deaths from opioid use in Ontario have doubled-from 13.7 deaths per million residents in 1991 to 27.2 deaths per million residents in 2004-according to a new study led by physicians at St. Michael's Hospital and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) in Toronto.

8 Dec 2009

New nursing guideline to enhance improved care for MMT clients

A pregnant woman walks into a hospital in early labour. She feels nauseated and achy; her contractions are 20 minutes apart. There is more to her story than meets the eye. She is on methadone maintenance therapy (MMT) and wasn't able to pick up her daily dose at the pharmacy this morning. Although her story may be hard to believe she is one of the estimated 17,000 clients in Ontario currently receiving MMT.

2 Dec 2009

New article discusses the balance between pain management and drug safety

26 Nov 2009

Study examines temporal association between media coverage and opioid-related deaths

Increases in deaths from opioid drugs such as OxyContin may be linked to the volume of coverage such deaths receive in the news, according to a study from Children's Hospital Boston and the University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill. The study compared patterns of opioid deaths and patterns of news coverage between 1999 and 2005, during which time mortality rates from opioid abuse doubled.

20 Nov 2009

Binge drinking, cannabis and prescription drugs still remain a concern among teenagers

While fewer teens are drinking alcohol in 2009 than a decade ago, binge drinking, use of cannabis and prescription drugs remain a concern, according to the 2009 Ontario Student Drug Use and Health Survey (OSDUHS) released today by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

19 Nov 2009

Millennium Laboratories announces new clinical quantitative assay and drug screening tests for healthcare

Millennium Laboratories, a leading provider of therapeutic drug monitoring and education to physicians and staff treating chronic pain patients, announced today the company’s development and validation of a clinical quantitative assay for the new drug tapentadol (Nucynta™) by liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS).

12 Nov 2009

Eleven accused of scamming Medicare in Michigan

Eleven people were charged in an indictment unsealed on Thursday with "scamming Medicare to get painkillers," the Associated Press reports.

5 Jun 2009

Oxycodone effective against shingles pain

The painkiller oxycodone is effective at treating the acute pain of shingles, an illness that often causes severe pain which can become long-lasting and sometimes even permanent.

26 Mar 2009

Decline in teen marijuana use stalls - trends in cigarette and alcohol use continues to fall

There are signs that the ongoing decline in teen marijuana use in recent years has stalled; however the downward trend in cigarette and alcohol use continues, according to the 2008 Monitoring the Future (MTF) Survey. Results were announced today at a news conference.

11 Dec 2008

TheraQuest's IND for abuse deterrent strong opioid (TQ-1015) accepted by FDA

TheraQuest Biosciences, Inc. a development stage pain management company today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has accepted its Investigational New Drug ("IND") application for TQ-1015, its abuse deterrent extended release strong opioid. TQ-1015 is being developed using Securel, TheraQuest's proprietary abuse deterrent technology.

13 Nov 2008

Extended suboxone treatment substantially improves outcomes for opioid-addicted young adults

In the first clinical trial of a medication that was used for an extended time to treat opioid addiction in young adults, participants who received counseling and Suboxone (buprenorphine-naloxone) for 12 weeks had substantially better outcomes than those who received the standard treatment of short-term detoxification and counseling.

4 Nov 2008

Abuse of painkillers can predispose adolescents to lifelong addiction

No child aspires to a lifetime of addiction. But their brains might. In new research to appear online in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology today, Rockefeller University researchers reveal that adolescent brains exposed to the painkiller OxyContin can sustain lifelong and permanent changes in their reward system - changes that increase the drug's euphoric properties and make such adolescents more vulnerable to the drug's effects later in adulthood.

10 Sep 2008

OxyContin drug company sued for millions

A private company in the United States is being sued by a number of counties in the state of Kentucky over the potent painkilling drug OxyContin.

7 Oct 2007

Research explains why opioids are thought to be ineffective in people with fibromyalgia

People who have the common chronic pain condition fibromyalgia often report that they don't respond to the types of medication that relieve other people's pain.

27 Sep 2007

Americans popping more pills

Americans are it seems popping more pills than ever, as according to an analysis of federal data, sales of leading painkiller medications soared by 90 percent in the eight years between 1997 and 2005.

21 Aug 2007

National study to treat addiction to prescription pain medications

Researchers funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health, launched the first large-scale national study evaluating a treatment for addiction to prescription opioid analgesics (i.e., painkillers) such as Vicodin and OxyContin.

10 Jul 2007