Opioids News and Research

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An opioid is a chemical that works by binding to opioid receptors, which are found principally in the central nervous system and the gastrointestinal tract. The receptors in these two organ systems mediate both the beneficial effects and the side effects of opioids.

Medicinal plant extract could potentially help curb the opioid epidemic

The extract of the plant Corydalis yanhusuo prevents morphine tolerance and dependence while also reversing opiate addiction, according to a recent study led by the University of California, Irvine. The findings were published in the October issue of the journal Pharmaceuticals.

12 Oct 2021

Oral acetaminophen helps manage tonsillectomy pain in children at lower costs

Providing children oral instead of intravenous (IV) acetaminophen to help manage tonsillectomy pain improves care at lower costs, according to research being presented at the ANESTHESIOLOGY® 2021 annual meeting.

11 Oct 2021

KHN’s ‘What the Health?’: Abortion politics front and center

Meanwhile, Congress flirted with disaster as it appeared unlikely to meet deadlines to approve a series of budget bills, including an extension of the federal government's lending authority. But lawmakers found ways to extend programs long enough to continue negotiating through the fall.

7 Oct 2021

Heroin overdose deaths more likely to occur shortly after hospital discharge

Drug-related deaths are four times more likely to occur in the two days after hospital discharge than at any other time among users of opioids such as heroin, according to research led by UCL, Public Health England (PHE) and King's College London.

6 Oct 2021

Fatal opioid overdoses four times more likely in the first two days after hospital discharge

The period after hospital discharge is a high-risk time for people who use illicit opioids such as heroin, according to new research publishing October 5th in the open access journal PLOS Medicine.

5 Oct 2021

'Think twice' campaign effective in reducing opioid prescribing in primary care

A campaign that urged GPs to 'think-twice' before putting a patient on opioid medicines is effective in reducing opioid prescribing in primary care, according to the findings of a major study.

5 Oct 2021

Legal consumption of alcohol and tobacco may increase the use of illicit drugs

The use of legal drugs (tobacco and alcohol) may lead to the use of cannabis, a new study led by the University of Bristol and published in the journal Addiction has found. The study also found evidence that cannabis use may lead to smoking initiation, and opioid dependence could lead to increased alcohol consumption.

30 Sep 2021

New SBIR award helps Temple scientists to explore the therapeutic potential of novel cannabis analog

More than 20 percent of adults in the United States live with chronic pain. For many affected individuals, long-term physical discomfort negatively impacts overall well-being, leading to reduced work output and increased anxiety and depression.

29 Sep 2021

Psychological treatment provides potent and durable relief for chronic back pain, study finds

Rethinking what causes pain and how great of a threat it is can provide chronic pain patients with lasting relief and alter brain networks associated with pain processing, according to new University of Colorado Boulder-led research.

29 Sep 2021

Study finds rise in methamphetamine-involved overdose deaths from 2015 to 2019

Overdose deaths involving methamphetamine nearly tripled from 2015 to 2019 among people ages 18-64 in the United States, according to a study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health.

22 Sep 2021

New slow-release system mimics nature to provide long-lasting local anesthesia

Site 1 sodium channel blockers such as tetrodotoxin and saxitoxin are small-molecule drugs with powerful local anesthetic properties.

14 Sep 2021

Enhanced recovery after surgery program helps reduce opioid prescriptions after lung surgery

Lung surgery patients who utilize a comprehensive, evidence-based enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) program require fewer opioid prescriptions when discharged and this effect was sustained over the 4-year study period, according to research presented today at the 18th Annual Perioperative and Critical Care Conference from The Society of Thoracic Surgeons.

10 Sep 2021

Marijuana use among college-age adults remains at historically high levels in 2020

Marijuana use continued to rise among college students over the past five years and remained at historically high levels among same-aged peers who are not in college in 2020, according to survey results from the 2020 Monitoring the Future (MTF) panel study.

8 Sep 2021

Link discovered between brain’s opioid system and food craving triggered by external stimuli

Brain regulation of feeding behavior traits has remained incompletely understood. In their latest study, researchers at the Turku PET Centre, Finland, discovered a connection between the function of the opioid system and food craving triggered by appetitive external stimuli.

2 Sep 2021

Study uses novel technology to map the brain circuitry of spirituality

Scientists have long suspected that religiosity and spirituality could be mapped to specific brain circuits, but the location of those circuits remains unknown. Now, a new study using novel technology and the human connectome, a map of neural connections, has identified a brain circuit that seems to mediate that aspect of our personality. The work appears in Biological Psychiatry, published by Elsevier.

31 Aug 2021

Mobile telemedicine unit found to be effective in treating opioid use disorder in rural areas

Rural regions in the U.S. have been disproportionately affected by the opioid epidemic, while also having the fewest number of programs to treat opioid use disorder.

28 Aug 2021

NIH HEAL Initiative leverages the strengths of communities to address opioid public health crisis

An article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association highlights the results of numerous strategies through which the National Institutes of Health's Helping to End Addiction Long-term Initiative, or NIH HEAL Initiative, is finding scientific solutions to address the nation's opioid crisis.

26 Aug 2021

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