Oct 5th, 2022 - Street Medicine Reaches People Where They Live Doctors across the country have carved out a new specialty in order to treat people who are homeless: street medicine. It is difficult to fund and almost impossible to bill for the care that is given — there is no Medicaid line for "on the street" — but it is also the best way to reach and treat the unsheltered as both patients and people. By the n...

Oct 4th, 2022 - One summer evening, on his regular rounds through the streets of Syracuse, NY, David Lehmann, MD, PharmD, came across an unsheltered man in dirty clothes who seemed to be making his bed each night on the pavement where he stood. An exam in the privacy of the medical van revealed a painful, infected boil on the man's backside. After some coaxing, Lehmann lanced the infected sore, gave medicine a...

Oct 4th, 2022 - Starting treatment for alcohol use disorder (AUD) with extended-release naltrexone injections in the emergency department (ED) produced a dramatic reduction in alcohol consumption, according to findings presented at the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) 2022 Scientific Assembly. The results show the feasibility of such a program and underscore the importance of the ED in combating...

Oct 4th, 2022 - Bariatric surgery may raise the risk of developing epilepsy, new research suggests. Analyzing health records, investigators compared almost 17,000 patients who had undergone bariatric surgery with more than 620,000 individuals with obesity who had not undergone the surgery. During a minimum 3-year follow-up period, the surgery group had a 45% higher risk of developing epilepsy than the nonsurge...

Oct 4th, 2022 - Medicine or dietary supplement? N-acetylcysteine (NAC) is marketed as both and in 2021, the supplement abruptly became difficult to find, causing distress to people who had been using it for a variety of conditions. The story behind its disappearance is one of a cat-and-mouse chase between manufacturers, advocacy agencies, and the Food and Drug Administration. Dr Dinah Miller NAC is a medicatio...

Sep 29th, 2022 - WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic, the economic toll of the opioid addiction and overdose crisis on the United States reached nearly $1.5 trillion in 2020 alone and is likely to grow, a congressional report seen by Reuters shows. Opioid-related deaths soared during the pandemic, including from the powerful synthetic painkiller fentanyl, exacerbating an already tragic and co...

Sep 28th, 2022 - Nightmares May Predict Dementia Healthy middle-aged adults who have nightmares once a week or more were four times more likely to develop dementia within a decade, new research suggests. The results were reported in a study published in The Lancet journal eClinicalMedicine. The large cohort study also showed that older adults were twice as likely to be diagnosed with dementia compared with peer...

Sep 27th, 2022 - A study incorporating pharmacy student interns into naloxone outreach was found to be feasible, and the program had a high naloxone acceptance rate, according to research published in the Journal of Pain & Palliative Care Pharmacotherapy. This study was conducted at the William S. Middleton Memorial Veterans Hospital, in Madison, Wisconsin. Incoming third-year pharmacy student interns (n=4) wer...

Sep 27th, 2022 - The Safer Opioid Supply (SOS) Program near Toronto, Canada, appears to be a safe and effective harm-reduction initiative, according to new data. An analysis indicates that the program is associated with a reduction in emergency department visits, hospitalizations, and overall healthcare costs. In addition, there were no opioid-related deaths among participants who were at high risk of overdose....

Sep 27th, 2022 - This discussion was recorded on August 31, 2022. This transcript has been edited for clarity. Robert Glatter, MD: Welcome. I'm Dr Robert Glatter, medical advisor for Medscape Emergency Medicine. Today we have Dr Paul Christo, a pain specialist in the Division of Pain Medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, and host of the national radio show Aches and Gai...

Sep 27th, 2022 - Spironolactone, a potassium-sparing diuretic typically used to treat heart failure and hypertension, shows promise in treating alcohol use disorder (AUD), new research suggests. Researchers at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), and Yale University School of Medicine investigated the impact of spironolactone on AUD. Initia...

Sep 27th, 2022 - New research shows that SBIRT — screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment for drug misuse — is effective at preventing substance use in adolescents in a variety of clinical settings. In a collection of 12 articles published as a supplement to the Journal of Adolescent Health, investigators offered new perspectives on the role of the approach in adolescent health, research that ma...

Sep 23rd, 2022 - Fentanyl depresses breathing about 4 minutes before symptoms of distress are evident at a dose that is 1700 times lower than that needed for sedation, new research shows. This new information comes after researchers identified a unique EEG signature produced by fentanyl, the first known biomarker of an opiate's effect on the brain. By monitoring the EEG signal, investigators were able to monito...

Sep 22nd, 2022 - (Reuters) - CVS Health Corp and Walmart Inc have agreed to pay $147.5 million to settle West Virginia's claims over their alleged roles in the state's opioid crisis, state attorney general Patrick Morrisey said Tuesday. CVS agreed to pay $82.5 million and Walmart agreed to pay approximately $65 million, according to the state. West Virginia had been prepared to proceed to trial on Sept. 26 agai...

Sep 21st, 2022 - Drug overdose deaths rose significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic, but more so among Blacks and American Indian and Alaska Native people. The results underscore the "urgency of expanding prevention, treatment, and harm reduction interventions tailored to specific populations, especially American Indian or Alaska Native and Black populations, given long-standing structural racism and inequiti...

Sep 15th, 2022 - For uninsured individuals, the out-of-pocket cost of naloxone may be an increasingly substantial barrier to its use, according to the results of an observational study published in JAMA Health Forum. Data on naloxone prescription claims were sourced from the Symphony Health nationwide prescription claims database between 2010 and 2018, and evaluated for trends in annual counts and out-of-pocket...

Sep 15th, 2022 - Although a small absolute increase in risk for overdose or suicide linked with opioid tapering compared with stable opioid dosage is observed, there is no evidence that mandatory dosage tapering for individuals on stable long-term opioid dosage (without opioid misuse) will reduce short-term suicide or overdosing, according to study findings published recently in JAMA Network Open. Recent indica...

Sep 15th, 2022 - SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — With more than 100,000 people living on California's streets, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a first-of-its kind law on Wednesday that could force some of them into treatment as part of a program he describes as "care" but opponents argue is cruel. Newsom signed the Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment Act on Wednesday. It would let family members, first responders and ...

Sep 15th, 2022 - Lung cancer continues to be the leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. Non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) accounts for approximately 85% of all lung cancers and is divided histologically into adenocarcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and large cell carcinoma. In the United States, Canada, and many European countries, squamous cell carcinoma is the second most common histologic subtype...

Sep 14th, 2022 - Exposure to cannabis in the womb may leave children at risk for psychiatric disorders and problematic substance abuse, particularly as they enter peak periods of vulnerability in late adolescence, new research shows. In a study published September 12 in JAMA Pediatrics, the investigators say the results should prompt further caution against the use of cannabis during pregnancy. A 2019 study fou...