Jan 26th, 2023 - Prescribing buprenorphine for opioid use disorder just got easier. The DATA-Waiver (X-Waiver) Program was eliminated on December 29, 2022, with President Biden’s of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023, which contains the Mainstreaming Addiction Treatment Act (MAT Act). Now, practitioners with a current Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) registration may prescribe buprenorphine for op...

Dec 19th, 2022 - This is the fourth installment of our 6-part series on mental health issues exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. In this installment, we will discuss identifying and treating substance use disorders in adolescents and adults in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic in primary care. A 45-year-old man presents to his primary care office at 9:00 am after he was asked to leave work the day before...

Dec 13th, 2022 - WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A crackdown by U.S. drug wholesalers in response to the opioid crisis is preventing some pharmacists from dispensing a combination of stimulants and sedatives routinely prescribed by psychiatrists to help patients manage conditions like anxiety and ADHD. The three main U.S. pharmaceutical wholesalers - AmerisourceBergen Corp, Cardinal Health Inc and McKesson Corp - tighte...

Dec 12th, 2022 - Canada's Prison Needle Exchange Program, a syringe distribution program in nine federal correctional institutions, faces major limitations and low participation rates, according to a new report. Based on interviews with people who were formerly incarcerated, the independent report pinpoints barriers to access and outlines recommendations to ensure that the program works as intended. Emily van d...

Dec 9th, 2022 - This transcript has been edited for clarity. Hi. I'm Art Caplan. I'm at the Division of Medical Ethics at the New York University School of Medicine. I want to talk about a paper that my colleagues in my division just published in Health Affairs. Amanda Zink, Lauren Taylor, and a couple of others wrote a very interesting piece, which I think has significance and importance for all those doing c...

Dec 9th, 2022 - This transcript has been edited for clarity. Hi. I'm Art Caplan. I'm the director of the Division of Medical Ethics at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine in New York City. New York City is on the cutting edge with a very controversial program. It has two centers operating as overdose prevention centers, where individuals can come who are using drugs and take heroin or other drugs under the sup...

Dec 8th, 2022 - As a pathologist and medical editor, I know little about psychiatry. As a physician, a forensic toxicologist, and a broad observer, I know a lot. These are my personal observations of 70 years of American psychiatry. In 1951, my first girlfriend in college was the daughter of a medical missionary who had moved from Africa to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to work as a physician at the Bryce Hospital, bui...

Dec 8th, 2022 - Poison control centers in the United States now receive more calls about adolescents abusing cannabis than alcohol or any other substance, according to a new study. Many helpline calls about cannabis involve edible products, the researchers noted. Over-the-counter medications — especially dextromethorphan-containing cough and cold medications and oral antihistamines, such as Benadryl — are othe...

Dec 7th, 2022 - Prenatal Tests Only Lightly Regulated There is no federal agency that checks to ensure that widely used prenatal tests work the way they claim before they're sold to healthcare providers, ProPublica reports. As many as half of all pregnant women get noninvasive prenatal screening tests, but the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not regulate them. The FDA also doesn't check whether evid...

Dec 7th, 2022 - Drug overdose deaths in pregnant and postpartum women rose by about 81% from 2017 to 2020, researchers report in a JAMA research letter published online Dec. 6. Pregnancy-associated overdose deaths were highest in 2020 as the COVID pandemic began, according to the researchers, Emilie Bruzelius, MPH, and Silvia S. Martins, MD, PHD, with the department of epidemiology, Columbia University School ...

Dec 6th, 2022 - Heart failure associated with illicit use of the psychostimulant methamphetamine (MethHF) is increasing in the US and around the world across racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups, a literature review indicates. MethHF is associated with increased severity for HF, longer inpatient stay, and more readmissions, compared with non-MethHF, the data show. Clinicians "need to consider methamphetami...

Dec 2nd, 2022 - As fentanyl-related overdose deaths continue to increase, clinicians should take note of important differences that set the drug apart from the other drugs of misuse — and the troubling reality that fentanyl now contaminates most of them. "It would be fair to tell patients, if you're buying any illicit drugs — pills, powder, liquid, whatever it is, you've got to assume it's either contaminated ...

Nov 30th, 2022 - Using buprenorphine for opioid use disorder in pregnancy was linked with a lower risk of neonatal side effects than using methadone, but the risk of adverse maternal outcomes was similar between the two treatments, according to new research. Elizabeth A. Suarez, PhD, MPH, with Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, led the study published online in the New England Journal of Medicine. Opioid u...

Nov 25th, 2022 - LONDON — Highly processed foods meet the same criteria as tobacco for addiction, and labeling them as such might benefit public health, according to a new US study that proposes a set of criteria to assess the addictive potential of some foods. The research suggests that healthcare professionals are taking steps towards framing food addiction as a clinical entity in its own right; it currently ...

Nov 23rd, 2022 - France — In light of the French International Prison Observatory's (OIP) report published last summer on the findings of a months-long inquiry concerning access to specialist care in prison, we interviewed 54-year-old Béatrice Carton, MD, chair of the French association of healthcare professionals working in the prison service (APSEP), on her experience working in a detention center. Having a w...

Nov 23rd, 2022 - Dr Mitchell Rosenthal Mitchell Rosenthal, MD, the founder and long-time president and CEO of Phoenix House, a nonprofit substance use disorder treatment organization, died on November 17 at the age of 87. The psychiatrist died at a Manhattan hospital from complications of pneumonia, The New York Times reports. Rosenthal was a dedicated advocate of ensuring that those with substance use disorder...

Nov 21st, 2022 - Is Drug Abuse Among Doctors Rising? Some evidence suggests that substance abuse may be rising among physicians since the pandemic. Some 51% of physicians think that substance abuse has "increased" in their profession since the onset of COVID-19, but 48% report it at the same level as in pre-pandemic years, according to Medscape's Substance and Opioid Abuse Report 2022. Others argue that evidenc...

Nov 21st, 2022 - Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf has signed a law legalizing the sale and distribution of test strips designed to detect whether fentanyl is in an illicit drug. Harm-reduction advocates welcomed the action, saying that it has the potential to help reduce overdoses. The Pennsylvania Department of Health reported that 78% of the 5343 overdose deaths state-wide in 2021 involved fentanyl. "Because fentan...

Nov 18th, 2022 - You might not think COVID and substance abuse go hand in hand but you'd be mistaken. It seems substance abuse, and particularly opioid usage, is on the rise among physicians since the COVID pandemic hit in March 2020. Medscape's Substance and Opioid Abuse Report 2022 found that 51% of physicians think the problem has "increased" in their profession since the onset of COVID-19. But another 48% r...

Nov 18th, 2022 - Texas-based researchers have developed a vaccine that blocks the euphoric effects of fentanyl, a potent synthetic opioid that is increasingly involved in opioid overdose deaths in the United States. In studies in male and female mice, the vaccine generated significant and long-lasting levels of anti-fentanyl antibodies that were highly effective at reducing the antinociceptive, behavioral, and ...