Tackling prescription drug abuse There are signs that strategies to address prescription drug abuse are starting to work but will an increase in illegal drug use be the payoff?…
The prescription opioid addiction and abuse epidemic: how it happened and what we can do about it Opioid painkillers are supposed to provide pain relief, but there is now a plethora of injuries and deaths because they have been heavily marketed and inappropriately prescribed.…
Painkiller use is more closely linked to homicide than antipsychotics or antidepressants There is a closer association between use of painkillers and homicide than there is between the use of antipsychotics or antidepressants and killing someone, research shows.…
Modified yeasts could be used to produce alkaloid drugs Yeast has been genetically modified to make (S)-reticuline, a precursor to a wide range of therapeutic alkaloids. The work marks an important step towards producing such pharmaceuticals by fermentation.…
Combining nortriptyline with morphine may provide superior analgesia over monotherapies For patients with neuropathic pain, average daily pain scores were reduced significantly more with combination therapy than with either nortriptyline or morphine alone.…
Illicit drug overdose: managing emergency care With up to 253,000 deaths related to drug misuse globally, understanding how to identify and treat drug overdoses can save lives.…
Meta-analysis casts doubt over first-line paracetamol use for back pain and osteoarthritis A meta-analysis published in The BMJ has cast doubt on the use of paracetamol as the first-line analgesic for spinal pain and osteoarthritis of the hip and knee.…
FDA fights opioid abuse with industry guidance Measures to limit the abuse of opioid drugs have been issued by the US Food and Drug Administration in guidance for the pharmaceutical industry.…
Reformulated OxyContin reduces abuse but many addicts have switched to heroin Reformulation of OxyContin into an abuse-deterrent formula has reduced its illicit use but has caused people to switch to other opioid drugs, a US study finds.…
Risk of unintentional overdose higher for long-acting opioids Patients taking long-acting opioids are more than twice as likely to overdose unintentionally than patients taking short-acting opioids, study finds.…