Feature Channels: Drugs and Drug Abuse

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New study shows low use of telehealth services for substance use disorder. More than 20 million Americans have substance use disorders related to alcohol, opioids and other drugs. Less than one in five receive treatment for substance use disorder, in part because of lack of providers, especially in rural areas. Telehealth—which allows clinicians to evaluate and treat patients via video conferencing—could help fill this unmet need, but increasing use must overcome regulatory barriers and target rural areas.

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Nursing and pharmacy researchers hope to find a replacement for prednisone with fewer and less-severe side effects.

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New research from Cornell University suggests graphic warning labels on cigarette ads have the same anti-smoking effect as similar warning labels on cigarette packs.

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Chicago adults identified drug abuse, obesity, and child abuse and neglect as the top three big health problems for children and adolescents in the city, according to results from a new survey developed by Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH).

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Preclinical experiments by University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers suggest the cancer drugs vorinostat, belinostat and panobinostat might be repurposed to treat infections caused by human papillomaviruses, or HPVs.

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Opioid use in Mexico has been low, but national and international factors are converging and a threat of increased drug and addiction rates exists. Many of these factors may have originated in the U.S., making this a potential joint U.S.-Mexico epidemic.

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Among pregnant women , amphetamine-affected births (mostly attributed to methamphetamine) doubled .

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The Coriell Institute for Medical Research, Cooper University Health Care and Cooper Medical School of Rowan University (CMSRU) are launching the Camden Opioid Research Initiative (CORI), a first-of-its-kind undertaking to investigate the genetic and biological factors that contribute to the development of opioid use disorder (also referred to as opioid dependence or addiction). Opioid overdoses continue to climb in New Jersey and nationally and the opioid addiction epidemic is one of the most urgent public health concerns of our time. This year is the deadliest year of this epidemic in the Garden State.

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Additional speakers are being announced today for the inaugural Bloomberg American Health Summit, which will be held November 29 and 30 at the Fairmont Hotel in Washington, D.C.

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Two U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) National Laboratories were recently awarded the 2018 Association for Computing Machinery’s (ACM’s) Gordon Bell Prize.

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Physiatrists and pain management experts call for an expansion of the national focus beyond safer opioid prescribing and addiction management to include a functional approach to both the diagnosis and treatment of pain. A report recently published in the American Journal of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation (AJPM&R) calls for a comprehensive national strategy to include physical medicine: the expert diagnosis of musculoskeletal and other acute and chronic pain conditions, increased attention to non-pharmacological rehabilitation-based treatments, enhanced funding of pain research that includes functional outcomes, and an expansion in graduate medical education targeted to physiatry.

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Men and women who identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual are more likely to misuse opioids when compared with those who identify as heterosexual, a new study shows.

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As part of an ongoing commitment to battle opioid addiction, the Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute at West Virginia University today marked a major milestone, enrolling the first patient in a randomized clinical trial that will test the effectiveness of an injectable non-opioid, non-steroid micropellet to treat sciatica.

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With U.S. life expectancy now on the decline for two consecutive years, the Bloomberg American Health Initiative is releasing a supplement to Public Health Reports, the scholarly journal of the U.S. Surgeon General. The supplement includes a series of special articles addressing five of the most complex and urgent health challenges facing the United States, specifically: addiction and overdose, violence, obesity and the food system, environmental challenges, and risks to adolescent health.

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A bill introduced Nov. 14 in the U.S. Senate and supported by the American Chiropractic Association (ACA) would expand access to chiropractic services to military retirees as well as members of the National Guard and Reserve through the Department of Defense TRICARE health program.

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Experts from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine’s Department of Health Policy and Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of Education and Human Development are joining efforts to establish a Policies for Action (P4A) Research Hub at Vanderbilt to better understand and develop recommendations to address the needs of some of Tennessee’s most vulnerable children, including children in immigrant families and children with prenatal exposure to opioids.

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44 percent of people who died from fentanyl overdose had previously been prescribed fentanyl by a medical professional, and 37 percent of those people had a prescription for fentanyl within 60 days of their death.

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As roadway safety remains a pressing public health concern in California, researchers at the Qualcomm Institute and the University of California San Diego School of Medicine have received funding to expand a statewide program known as Training, Research, and Education for Driving Safety (TREDS). TREDS recently launched a public awareness campaign called “Higher Education: Driving High is DUI” to raise awareness about the dangers of driving under the influence of drugs.

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Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC) will present Nora Volkow, MD, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a part of the National Institutes of Health, with its highest honor, the Cura Personalis Award, at a ceremony on Tuesday, Nov. 13 at 4:00 p.m.

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An innovative, cost-effective program in Western New York provides medication-assisted treatment to opioid use disorder patients in emergency departments (EDs) and rapidly transitions them into long-term treatment within about 48 hours.

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Rising rates and doses of prescription opioids may be a warning sign of an increased risk of death – even for patients not recognized as having opioid use disorder (OUD), reports a study in the Journal of Addiction Medicine, the official journal of the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM). The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.

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SAN FRANCISCO – Preliminary data from a new study presented this week at The Liver Meeting® – held by the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases – found that people who inject drugs who are infected with the hepatitis C virus have high rates of hepatitis C treatment adherence (completion of their treatment), and sustained virologic response. Based on these findings, researchers conclude these patients should be included in HCV treatment programs.

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Doctors now regularly prescribe drugs that reverse the effects of opioids in tandem with high-dose prescriptions of the painkillers.

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Many surgeons write prescriptions for opioid pain medications four times larger than what patients will actually use after common operations, a study shows. And the size of that prescription may be the most important factor in how many opioid pills the patient takes – outweighing pain scores, the intensity of their operation and more.

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To support the the American Cancer Society's Great American Smokeout, Quit & Stay Quit Monday, an initiative of The Monday Campaigns and the Institute for Global Tobacco Control at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, are introducing a new “Monday Quit Kit” for individuals and tobacco cessation professionals that can help quitters stay on track over the long haul.

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A widely used naloxone nasal spray (NNS) and naloxone injection (NIJ), otherwise known as Narcan® and Evzio®, which are administered to prevent opioid overdose deaths, were found to be chemically stable up for at least ten months and beyond one year of the expiration date, respectively.

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Adolescents with a particular variant of an opioid receptor gene have less response in a part of prefrontal cortex that evaluates rewards, compared to those with the other version of the gene, say researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC). The study will be presented Nov. 5 at Neuroscience 2018, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience (abstract #7517).

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In a study of pregnancy-associated deaths of women from 2007 to 2016, researchers found that mortality involving opioids either during pregnancy or up to one year post-pregnancy more than doubled during that time.

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Penn Medicine emergency department physicians are calling for more readily available testing strips to identify the presence of fentanyl in patients experiencing a drug overdose, and a rapid, coordinated response among health care providers and city agencies to help curb overdoses and identify high potency high risk drugs.

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Students from low-income neighborhoods who attended a high-achieving school were less likely to abuse marijuana than those who weren’t offered admission. By 11th grade, the risk of misusing the drug was cut by half in boys at top-performing schools.

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• Individuals with kidney disease have a higher likelihood of using prescription opioids, and the prevalence of prescription opioid use in the chronic kidney disease population has increased in recent years. • Certain factors are associated with opioid drug use in patients with chronic kidney disease. • Results from the study will be presented at ASN Kidney Week 2018 October 23–October 28 at the San Diego Convention Center.

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A study, which evaluated the prevalence and clinical consequences of prescription amphetamine (AMP) misuse among adolescents and adults, found severe medical outcomes occur when people snort or inject stimulant medication.

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In this issue, find research on infant sugary drink consumption, China's top 20 health challenges, aging and healthy years in the Netherlands, and increasing opioid use in Massachusetts

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People who were exposed to the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center (WTC) have elevated rates of alcohol- or drug-related death, reports a study in the October Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

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While nearly all Americans say they would choose an alternative to opioid pain relievers following surgery, few patients are talking to their health care provider about it, according to the Mayo Clinic National Health Checkup.

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Pain researcher Daniela Salvemini, Ph.D., will embark on two new research projects, studying chemotherapy-induced cognitive impairment, or “chemo brain,” symptoms and unwanted side effects of opioids.

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A treatment protocol that sends people home after colorectal operations without any opioids to manage their pain leads to shorter hospital stays.

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A new study shows wide variation in prescriptions of sedative drugs, called benzodiazepines, to people with Medicare coverage. Some counties, especially in southern and rural western states, had three times the level of sedative prescribing as others. The study also highlights gaps at the level of individual prescribers: Some primary care providers prescribed sedatives more than six times more often than their peers.

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New research from Duke and Yale universities shows flavorings are transforming more than marketing. The chemical additives react to e-liquid, or e-juice, creating new compounds that could trigger irritation and inflammation when inhaled.

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Mount Sinai Researchers Find Long-Term Structural and Gene Expression Disturbances in Adult Brains in Association with Adolescent THC Exposure; These Changes Mimic Aspects of Psychosis Risk

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Northwestern Medicine and Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago are coming together with the Drug Enforcement Administration to host collection sites for National Prescription Drug Take Back Day on Saturday, October 27.

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Approximately $1.7 million in new funding from the National Institutes of Health will enable a multidisciplinary team of University of Illinois at Chicago researchers to build a reference library of bacteria to help scientists quickly identify bacterial strains and analyze their disease-fighting potential.

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Simon Haeder and Sara Anderson have been selected to participate in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Interdisciplinary Research Leaders Program.

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The American Association of Nurse Anesthetists (AANA) commends the U.S. Congress for its passage of a comprehensive, bipartisan package to support the prevention and treatment of opioid addiction in America.

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Health, family and romance problems appear to be the particular life stressors most associated with increased risk for using opioids to cope, and individuals with low self-esteem appear to be at risk for these connections, according to a new paper including researchers at Binghamton University, State University at New York.

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In October, Garrett Moran, Ph.D., will join RNI as the associate director of services and policy innovation.