Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Jason Nickerson and Amir Attaran of the University of Ottawa, Canada examine in this week’s PLoS Medicine the vast inequities in medical pain relief around the world, arguing that the imbalance has arisen from restrictive drug laws designed to prevent access to illegal substances, and proposing that the global control of licit narcotics be shifted from the International Narcoti…
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Also tagged imbalance, international, jason-nickerson, licit-narcotics, medical-pain, medicine, nickerson, prevent-access, the-imbalance, university, vast, week, world
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Thursday, December 8, 2011
A UCSF study suggests patients with chronic pain may experience greater relief if their doctors add cannabinoids – the main ingredient in cannabis or medical marijuana – to an opiates-only treatment. The findings, from a small-scale study, also suggest that a combined therapy could result in reduced opiate dosages…
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Also tagged chronic-pain, combined-therapy, doctors, greater-relief, may-experience, medical-marijuana, reduced-opiate, study-suggests, the-main, their-doctors, ucsf
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Wednesday, November 23, 2011
UC Irvine and Italian researchers have discovered a new means of enhancing the effects of anandamide – a natural, marijuana-like chemical in the body that provides pain relief. Led by Daniele Piomelli, UCI’s Louise Turner Arnold Chair in the Neurosciences, the team identified an “escort” protein in brain cells that transports anandamide to sites within the cell where enzymes break it down…
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Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Individuals addicted to prescription painkillers are more likely to succeed in treatment with the aid of the medication buprenorphine-naloxone (Suboxone), report McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School researchers in the online edition of the Archives of General Psychiatry…
In what is believed to be the first study of its kind to demonstrate an association between the antidepressant escitalopram and improved general pain, researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM), have found that opioid-dependent patients treated with escitalopram experienced meaningful reductions in pain severity and pain interference during the first three months of therapy…
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Fatal overdoses involving prescribed opioids tripled in the United States between 1999 and 2006, climbing to almost 14,000 deaths annually – more than cocaine and heroin overdoses combined. Hospitalizations and emergency room visits related to prescription opioid pain medicines such as oxycodone (brand name Oxycontin) and hydrocodone (Vicodin) also increased dramatically in the same period…
A new study by researchers at Drexel University’s School of Public Health suggests that abuse of prescription painkillers may be an important gateway to the use of injected drugs such as heroin, among people with a history of using both types of drugs…
Deaths related to prescription opioid therapy are under intense scrutiny, prompting those in pain medicine-clinicians, patient advocates, and regulators-to understand the causes behind avoidable mortality in legitimately treated patients…
The American Chiropractic Association (ACA) applauds federal efforts to curb prescription drug abuse following the U.S. government’s announcement in late April that the problem has reached crisis level.
Approximately 27,500 people died from unintentional drug overdoses in 2007, driven to a large extent by prescription opioid overdoses.