| House Debates Bill to Align SUD Rules with HIPAA Privacy Rule |
| HEALTH IT SECURITY (05/09) – Supporters and opponents of a bill that would align privacy protections for substance use disorder (SUD) patients with the HIPAA Privacy Rule faced off during a May 8 hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s health subcommittee. The Overdose Prevention and Patient Safety Act (HR 3545) would amend 42 CFR Part 2, which is intended to protect the confidentiality of people who seek SUD treatment, to expand healthcare provider access to SUD patient records while maintaining privacy protections under HIPAA. Read more |
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| It’s Time for a New Discussion of Marijuana’s Risks |
| NEW YORK TIMES (05/07) – The benefits and harms of medical marijuana can be debated, but more states are legalizing pot, even for recreational use. A new evaluation of marijuana’s risks is overdue. Last year, the National Academies of Sciences, Medicine and Engineering released a comprehensive report on cannabis use. At almost 400 pages long, it reviewed both potential benefits and harms. Read more |
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| What Can Ads Do For Addiction? |
| KMVT 11 (05/09) – Politicians on the left and the right are calling for an anti-addiction ad campaign aimed at the opioid epidemic. The airwaves of history are littered with previous anti-drug efforts - some of which had the opposite of the intended effect. Read more |
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| Narrative of Discovery: The Quest for a Medication to Treat Methamphetamine Addiction, Part Three |
| NIH (05/04) – Dr. Linda Dwoskin feels just one small step away from success in her effort to develop the first-ever medication to treat methamphetamine addiction. She and colleagues at the Universities of Kentucky and Arkansas have created a molecule that blocks methamphetamine’s addictive effects and completed preclinical testing without raising any red flags for undesirable side effects. Read more |
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| Study Upends Conventional View of Opioid Mechanism of Action |
| NIH (05/10) – A new discovery shows that opioids used to treat pain, such as morphine and oxycodone, produce their effects by binding to receptors inside neurons, contrary to conventional wisdom that they acted only on the same surface receptors as endogenous opioids, which are produced naturally in the brain. Read more |
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| A Potential New Weapon in the Battle Against Addiction |
| PENN UNIVERSITY (04/27) – […] Results showed a significant decrease in drug-craving and -seeking, both after an acute injection of cocaine and from re-exposure to environmental cues during withdrawal. “This tells us Exendin-4 can block the effects of cocaine itself but also condition stimuli previously paired with cocaine,” Schmidt notes. Read more |
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| Children of the Opioid Epidemic |
NEW YORK TIMES (05/09) – It was not until her third month of feeling unwell, in the fall of 2016, that Alicia thought to take an at-home pregnancy test. Until then, she assumed her fatigue and nausea were withdrawal symptoms from the Percocets she’d been dependent upon since the year before. Read more
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| Anti-Alcoholism Drug Shows Promise in Animal Models |
| UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN (05/03) – Scientists have successfully tested in animals a drug that, they say, may one day help block the withdrawal symptoms and cravings that incessantly coax people with alcoholism to drink. If eventually brought to market, it could help the more than 15 million Americans, and many more around the world who suffer from alcoholism stay sober. Read more |
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| Study Looks at Barriers to Getting Treatment for Substance Use Disorders |
| WOLTERS KLUWER HEALTH (05/08) – For patients with substance use disorders seen in the emergency department or doctor's office, locating and accessing appropriate treatment all too often poses difficult challenges. Healthcare providers and treatment facility administrators share their views on delays and obstacles to prompt receipt of substance use disorder treatment after referral[.] Read more |
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| Opioid "Contracts" Dividing Doctors, Pain Patients |
| THE FIX (05/09) – The increased use of written agreements between medical professionals and chronic pain patients that details conditions under which opioid medication can be prescribed is causing considerable debate about whether such "contracts," as they are often described, are useful in reducing misuse of such medication, and can have a negative impact on the doctor-patient relationship. Read more |
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| Harvard Brain Collection Will Help Scientists Dive Inside Eating Disorders |
| NPR (03/08) – Anorexia, bulimia and binge eating affect tens of millions of Americans, but eating disorders remain very difficult to treat, in part because it's not clear what goes wrong in the brain. "We don't really have a lot of information on what kind of brain changes, what kind of underlying pathology may be not only contributing to brain disorders, but also caused by brain disorders, as induced by an altered diet[.]" Read more |
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| Multiple and Substitute Addictions Involving Prescription Drugs Misuse Among 12th Graders: Gateway Theory Revisited With Market Basket Analysis |
| JOURNAL OF ADDICTION MEDICINE (04/28) – [...]The lifetime prevalence of using any addictive substance was 73.3%, and it has been decreasing during past few years. Although the lifetime prevalence of PDM was 19.2%, it has been increasing. Males and whites were more likely to use drugs and engage in multiple addictions. Market Basket Analysis identified common drug use initiation sequences that involved 11 drugs. Read more |
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| Messaging System Helps Caregivers Keep Tabs on Growing Number of Patients with Substance Use Disorder |
NEW ENGLAND JOURNALS OF MEDICINE CATALYST (04/17) – In light of the need for inexpensive, scalable solutions, we propose the widespread use of automated, bidirectional SMS (text) and phone call based mobile health systems that seamlessly integrate into existing community substance abuse recovery programs. They will allow providers to expand their services to larger populations without putting additional strain on care managers. Read more
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| How A.I. Can Help Addicts Stay Sober |
| THE DAILY BEAST (05/09) – Relapse is the biggest challenge to addicts in recovery, and the Sober Grid team knew via anecdotal stories that sometimes their app helped people avoid using again. They also had a lot of data from their user base, including when, how often, and what people communicated before a relapse. If that data was run through the right algorithm, could you work backward to predict relapse? Read more |
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| De Blasio Moves to Bring Safe Injection Sites to New York City |
| NEW YORK TIMES (05/03) – Mayor Bill de Blasio is championing a plan that would make New York City a pioneer in creating supervised injection sites for illegal drug users, part of a novel but contentious strategy to combat the epidemic of fatal overdoses caused by the use of heroin and other opioids. Safe injection sites have been considered successful in cities in Canada and Europe, but do not yet exist in the United States. Read more |
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| Correlation Between Secondhand Marijuana and Tobacco Smoke Exposure and Children ED Visits |
| SCIENCE DAILY (05/05) – Marijuana is the most commonly used illicit substance in the US. Secondhand marijuana smoke (SHMS) exposure and its subsequent impact on child health have not been studied. The objective of this study was to determine association between SHMS exposure and rates of emergency department visitation, and rates of tobacco sensitive conditions (asthma, otitis media and viral respiratory infections). Read more |
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Should addiction be treated as a crime?
