Feature Channels: Addiction

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Johns Hopkins Bayview center helps babies by helping moms get clean: “Most of us wouldn’t have survived what some of these mothers have been through.”

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Drug-related overdoses are the leading cause of injury-related deaths in the United States, surpassing motor vehicle accidents at 44,000 fatalities annually. In response, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have partnered with the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department to implement and study a program that requires all deputies carry and be trained to use a life-saving drug in the event of a discovered overdose and then refer victims to a treatment center once they are revived.

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Diagnosing Mononucleosis, Need for Health Interventions for Single Parent Households in Urban Subsidized Housing Programs, Inadequate Financial Savings Tied to Increased Childhood Health Risks, and more in the Public Health News Source

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The team studied a group of children and teens ages 10 to 17 who were in lifestyle management programs – either for weight management or lipid disorders. The study looked at whether the videogame habits of the group had an impact on sleep habits, obesity and cardio-metabolic health.

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UB addictions expert Nancy Campbell-Heider calls on clinicians to screen for vaping among teens, who are either uninformed or misinformed about the dangers and risks associated with electronic cigarettes.

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According to a new report by Common Sense Media, 50 percent of teens admitted that they feel they are addicted to using their smartphones. The actual number is most likely even higher. Experts Needed for media inquiries.

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Infection is a serious complication of intravenous drug abuse and a major cause of illness and death among intravenous drug users. As the national problem of opioid abuse, including of heroin, continues to grow, new research by clinicians at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and the VA Boston Healthcare System, published today in the May issue of the journal Health Affairs, offers new insights into the significant impact of the trend on opioid-related hospitalizations, infectious complications and health care costs.

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A $2.1 million grant from the National Science Foundation will help ISU plant scientists build a better understanding of how corn plants deal with stress conditions. The research will focus on a delicate but vital process in plant cells called protein folding.

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Chronic heavy alcohol consumption may lead to an increase in the rate of nicotine metabolism, which could be a contributing factor to poor smoking cessation rates in smokers addicted to alcohol.

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Why does one person who tries cocaine get addicted, and another does not? Why do some people who kick a drug habit stay clean, but others relapse? The answers to these questions may have a lot to do with specific genetic factors that vary from individual to individual, a new study in rats suggests.

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Young and single men are at risk of being addicted to video games. The addiction indicates an escape from ADHD and psychiatric disorder.

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Compared to the nicotine patch and a placebo, the smoking cessation aids varenicline (marketed as Chantix in the U.S.) and bupropion (Zyban) do not show a significant increase in neuropsychiatric adverse events, reports an international team of researchers in a study published online April 22 in the journal The Lancet.

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The Addiction Medicine Foundation (formerly The ABAM Foundation) today announced the winners of the Next Generation Award for Adolescent Substance Use Prevention. The awards of $25,000 each, which are conferred by the Foundation’s National Center for Physician Training in Addiction Medicine and partially funded by the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.

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Smoking is a real problem for people with schizophrenia. A research team observed in schizophrenia smokers, when presented with appetitive cigarette images, greater neuronal activation of a specific region of the brain, the ventro-medial prefrontal cortex, a region involved in the brain reward system. The study confirms the tendency to smoke of people with schizophrenia and low smoking cessation rates.

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Three times more Canadian teenagers are gambling online than previously thought, according research from the University of Waterloo and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH).

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Opioids are highly addicting and liable for abuse. Methadone maintenance treatment is the most common intervention for those with drug addiction, but relapse is common, with 46% of patients continuing to use illicit opioids during or after the methadone treatment

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In a general sense, medical studies support the popular intuition -- a staple of movies and literature -- that suicidal behavior and substance misuse are linked. But the relationship between the two is not so simple. A new study of hundreds of suicidal emergency department (ED) patients from around the U.S. found that the significance of the link varied with age, gender and race. Across the board, however, the use of cocaine and alcohol together was a red flag.

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Previous research on an apparent narrowing of the historical “gender gap” in drinking prevalence found that girls were more likely to start drinking before 18 years of age compared to boys. This research seeks to extend these epidemiological findings by estimating the fine-grained, age-specific incidence of becoming a drinker among 12- to 24-year-old U.S. males and females, and comparing incidence estimates with prevalence proportions.

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Heavy drinking by students is common during the college years and is associated with potentially serious consequences. While student drinking tends to fluctuate throughout the calendar year, with marked increases during celebrations, most studies of the issue are limited to the academic year itself, relatively few focus specifically on special heavy drinking events, and even fewer include drinking during summer break and subsequent school return. This study uses longitudinal data to address these gaps.

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Injury death – including those due to intentional injury, with suicide most common, as well as unintentional injury, with motor vehicle crashes (MVCs) causing a majority – is the third leading cause of death in the United States. Postmortem examinations commonly test for blood alcohol concentration (BAC). This study utilizes postmortem data to examine the hypotheses that high, and very high, BACs are more common among MVC decedents than among suicide decedents, whereas low alcohol levels are more common among suicide decedents.

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In the United States, prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) is the most common preventable cause of developmental delay. Animal studies have shown some of the adverse effects of PAE on placental development, but few studies have examined these effects in humans. This is the first study to examine the effects of prenatal exposure to methamphetamine, marijuana, and cigarette smoking on human placental development.

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The Addiction Medicine Foundation today announced the accreditation of four additional fellowship programs to train addiction medicine physicians. The Foundation has supported the establishment of 40 addiction medicine fellowship training programs to date, based at major medical schools and hospitals across North America.

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A team from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) and the University of North Carolina (UNC) has been awarded $3.4 million from the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop novel therapeutics for the treatment of addiction and mood disorders.

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Developmental psychologist finds adolescents with severe alcohol and other drug (AOD) problems have a low regard for others, as indicated by higher rates of driving under the influence and having unprotected sex with a history of sexually transmitted disease.

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A clinical trial from NYU Langone Medical Center and others finds use of long-term, extended-release naltrexone leads to decreases in opioid addiction relapse. Learn more.

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Most people know that heroin is a dangerous drug, but its cousins, the legal, pharmaceutical opioids, such as codeine or hydrocodone, must be safe, right?

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The American Chiropractic Association (ACA) applauds the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for working to stem the nation's opioid overuse epidemic with its newly issued Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain. ACA encourages patients and healthcare providers to first consider exhausting conservative forms of pain management before initiating higher-risk options such as opioids.

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As one of 18 pain management experts on the CDC Stakeholder Review Group asked to provide input on the CDC's Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain, Rush University Medical Center’s director of orthopedic anesthesia Asokumar Buvanendran recommended the CDC take several actions including: -Making prescribing physicians aware of opioid alternatives -Clearly conveying the safety and effectiveness of the alternatives -That insurance companies should cover alternatives

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The American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) announced today the recognition of Addiction Medicine as a new subspecialty. The American Board of Preventive Medicine (ABPM), a Member Board of ABMS, sponsored the application for the new field to be a multispecialty subspecialty – meaning that physicians certified by any Member Board of the ABMS can become certified in addiction medicine. The ABMS subspecialty recognition of Addiction Medicine has been championed by the American Board of Addiction Medicine (ABAM), which has established a certification examination and Maintenance of Certification (MOC) process for addiction medicine physicians.

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Is cellphone use detrimental to mental health? A new study from the University of Illinois finds that addiction to, and not simply use of, mobile technology is linked to anxiety and depression in college-age students.

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Researchers have discovered one reason why adolescents are more prone to drug addiction than adults, with findings that could lead to new treatments for addictive disorders.

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A Colorado State University study suggests that cannabis use significantly affects the ability to recognize, process and empathize with human emotions like happiness, sadness and anger.

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Abuse of prescription pain killers has become an epidemic in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Even more concerning is that those going through withdrawal may turn to heroin as an inexpensive, easy-to-access substitute.

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Exercise helps smokers with a high risk for cessation failure due to emotional distress finally kick the habit, according to psychologists at The University of Texas at Austin.

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Headlines about America’s worsening drug epidemic have focused on deaths from opioids—heroin and prescription painkillers such as OxyContin. But overdose deaths have also soared among the millions of Americans using benzodiazepine drugs, a class of sedatives that includes Xanax, Valium, and Klonopin, according to a study led by researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Montefiore Health System and the Perelman School of Medicine at University of Pennsylvania. Their findings appear online today in the American Journal of Public Health.

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In a recent study published in The Journal of Neuroscience, a research team led by Dr. Dorit Ron at the University of California, San Francisco examined whether a single exposure to alcohol can induce memory and behavioral changes that could promote future drinking.

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With use of synthetic opioid “designer drugs” rising, scientists from The Scripps Research Institute have a new strategy to curb addiction and even prevent fatal overdoses, reporting successful preclinical tests of a vaccine that prevents the synthetic opioid fentanyl from reaching the brain.

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Viewing graphic anti-smoking images on cigarette packs triggers activity in brain areas involved in emotion, decision-making and memory as observed via brain scans. Researchers from Georgetown University Medical Center and Truth Initiative reported their findings online this week in Addictive Behaviors Reports.

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Love can make you feel different things –- sometimes happy, sometimes fixated, and sometimes down right sick. And it turns out that drugs almost work in the same way. But how close are love and addictive drugs related? To the brain, love and drugs act similarly. Being in love floods the brain with chemicals and hormones that help form a connection and produce feelings of euphoria and fascination – the same effects as many drugs.

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A new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine looks at the relationship between lifetime marijuana use and cognitive function in middle-aged adults.

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How has new legislation affected marijuana use in the United States? The best available data suggest that marijuana use is increasing in adults but not teens, with a decrease in marijuana-related arrests but an increase in treatment admissions, according to an update in the January/February Journal of Addiction Medicine, the official journal of the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM). The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer.

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When it comes to prescription painkillers, the difference between controlling pain and dying from an overdose may come down to how strong a prescription the doctor wrote, according to a new study in veterans. And the threshold for safe prescribing may be lower than most people think – or than most guidelines recommend.

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Alcohol withdrawal adds challenges to caring for critically ill patients, and nurses must be diligent at each stage of care to minimize complications, according to an article in the clinical practice journal, Critical Care Nurse. The article provides much-needed guidance to critical care nurses and other clinicians whose patients may have alcohol use disorder, including abuse and dependency conditions of varying severity.

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Psychosocial interventions, used together with effective medications, are a key part of recommended treatment for opioid addiction. But while research generally supports the effectiveness of psychosocial treatments, there are major gaps in the evidence on their use in conjunction with medications, according to a review and update in the January/February Journal of Addiction Medicine, the official journal of the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM). The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer.

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Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) and New York State Psychiatric Institute have found that while cigarette smoking rates have declined among younger people in the United States, those who do smoke are more likely to have a psychiatric or substance use disorder compared with those who began smoking in earlier decades.

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