Category: From Newswise – Addiction

Scientists and medical professionals have long debated whether pod e-cigarettes are a safer alternative to traditional cigarettes. A new study provides some insight.

Dr. Lorraine Kelley-Quon forms team of health care providers and community advocates to establish recommendations for safe opioid use. According to the National Institutes of Health, opioid misuse and addiction in the United States is a national crisis, with an economic burden upwards of $78 billion. Opioids are useful for pain management following surgery and other major procedures, but until now there have been no recommendations guiding safe use of opioids in children.

November 19, 2020 marks the Great American Smokeout, an annual intervention hosted by the American Cancer Society as a call to action to take the first step towards better health through the elimination of tobacco products. Rutgers experts share more on why and how to get started.

An epidemic that was already raging before COVID-19 arrived has flared up in recent months, according to a real-time tracking system in Michigan. It shows a 15 percent rise in suspected opioid overdose deaths since March, compared with the same time last year, and a 29% rise in first responders’ use of the rescue drug naloxone.

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.

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.

Highlights from AJPH December Issue

The Mexico Violence Resource Project–a new initiative from the University of California San Diego’s Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies–was recently launched to provide policymakers and journalists analysis and information to better understand the complicated escalation of violence in Mexico.

In the wake of the opioid addiction crisis that has cost more than 500,000 U.S. lives, medical investigators have focused on finding new methods to help patients control pain.