Feature Channels: Substance Abuse

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A new study suggests that patients with opioid use disorder may be identified using information available in electronic health records, even when diagnostic codes do not reflect this diagnosis. The study demonstrates the utility of proxies coding for DSM-5 criteria from medical records to generate a quantitative DSM-5 score that is associated with opioid use disorder severity. The study methods are unique in deriving a severity score that aims to mirror severity scores from more traditional interview-based diagnostic procedures.

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Nearly one-third of students who reported misusing prescription opioids as high school seniors between 1997 and 2000, but did not have a history of medical use, later used heroin by age 35, according to a University of Michigan study.

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Fewer college-age Americans drink alcohol, compared to nearly 20 years ago, according to a new study.

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Scientists at Wake Forest School of Medicine have recorded real time changes in dopamine and serotonin levels in the human brain that are involved with perception and decision-making. These same neurochemicals also are critical to movement disorders and psychiatric conditions, including substance abuse and depression.

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US veterans with unhealthy alcohol use who reduce their drinking may gain some improvement in chronic pain symptoms and use of other substances, according to a study in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. Hazardous drinking is common in the US, and frequently co-occurs with chronic pain, depression and anxiety, and with tobacco, cannabis or cocaine use. Many people use alcohol and other substances to mask or self-manage pain and psychiatric symptoms, although there is little evidence to support such use. If, conversely, a reduction in drinking (or use of treatment for alcohol misuse) were to benefit co-occurring conditions or substance use, this could support an integrated approach to screening or treatment. The new analysis assessed the impact of drinking reduction on improvement of chronic pain, psychiatric symptoms, and other substance use among US veterans with unhealthy alcohol use – a population with high rates of these co-occurring conditions.

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The NIH has awarded NYU College of Dentistry researchers Nigel Bunnett, PhD, and Brian Schmidt, DDS, MD, PhD, a $3.9 million grant to study targeting endosomal receptors for the treatment of chronic pain. The five-year grant will support Bunnett and Schmidt’s collaborative research, which aims to ultimately yield improved pain management without the need for opioids.

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College students with physical and cognitive disabilities use illicit drugs more, and have a higher prevalence of drug use disorder, than their non-disabled peers, according to a Rutgers study.

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Opioid use disorder and overdose have reached unprecedented levels around the world. In the United States, remediation of pain is one of the most common reasons American adults seek healthcare. Therefore, it is vital that clinicians practicing in diverse roles and settings have a clinical understanding of pain and substance use disorders as well as knowledge about public health and opioid policy interventions.

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The slight decline in drug overdose deaths in 2018 coincides with Chinese regulations on the powerful opioid carfentanil, rather than the result of domestic U.S. efforts to curb the opioid epidemic, a University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health analysis revealed today.

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The University of Texas at El Paso’s Minority AIDS Research Center (MARC) is the subrecipient of a $1 million implementation grant to target substance use disorders and opioid use disorders in five rural counties along the Texas-Mexico border.

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Abandoned Buildings, Fear of Calling Police Contribute to High Rate of Fatal Overdoses in Philadelphia, New Study Shows

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The United States has seen a 200% increase in the rate of deaths by opioid overdose in the last 20 years. But many of these deaths were preventable. Naloxone, also called Narcan, is a prescription drug that reverses opioid overdoses, and in more than 40 states — including Pennsylvania — there is a standing order policy, which makes it available to anyone, without an individual prescription from a healthcare provider.

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Luis M. Tuesta, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, has been awarded the Avenir Award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health, to study the epigenetic mechanisms of microglial activation and their role in shaping the behavioral course of opioid use disorder.

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Cigarette smoking is associated with frequent substance use and poor behavioral and physical health in sexual and gender minority populations, according to Rutgers researchers.

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To better understand the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on cannabis and CBD use, the UCLA Cannabis Research Initiative has launched the Cannabis, CBD and COVID Survey.

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As you drift into unconsciousness before a surgery, general anesthetic drugs flowing through your blood are putting you to sleep by binding mainly to a protein in the brain called the ɣ-aminobutyric acid type A (GABAA) receptor. Now UT Southwestern scientists have shown exactly how anesthetics attach to the GABAA receptor and alter its three-dimensional structure, and how the brain can tell the difference between anesthetics and the psychoactive drugs known as benzodiazepines – which also bind to the GABAA receptor. The findings were published online today in the journal Nature.

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Brief interventions can potentially reduce incarcerated women’s alcohol use when they leave jail, according to a new study.

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People have traded in nightclubs and dance festivals for virtual raves and Zoom happy hours as a result of lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic—yet, many are using drugs in these socially distanced settings, according to a new study by researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and the Center for Drug Use and HIV/HCV Research at NYU School of Global Public Health.