Safely Prescribing Opioids, and Naloxone

“Even during this global pandemic, we have continued to prioritize addressing the opioid crisis,” says Stephen M. Hahn, MD, the FDA’s Commissioner, referring to the FDA’s new labeling requirement. This labeling—on opioid pain medication and opioid use disorder medication—must include the...

Risk Mitigation: Strategies

Courtney Kominek is a Clinical Pharmacy Specialist in Pain Management at the Truman VA in Columbia, Missouri; Abigail Brooks is a Clinical Pharmacy Specialist in Pain Management at the West Palm Beach VA. Here they talk about examples of risk mitigation strategies.

$5 Million to Research Prefrontal Cortex Neural Activity

Newswise — Opioid overdoses take the lives of tens of thousands of Americans annually. Two researchers from Penn State College of Medicine have received nearly $5 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study whether an already-approved drug can be used to reduce cravings and prevent...

Researchers Seek to Better Understand/Prevent Addiction

Newswise — Opioids play an important role in how cancer patients manage pain, but the ongoing opioid epidemic has raised concerns about their potential for abuse.

Pain remains one of the most difficult symptoms associated with cancer. More than half of cancer patients undergoing treatment...

Mindfulness/Meditation=Less Pain/Fewer Opioid Cravings

Newswise — People suffering from opioid addiction and chronic pain may have fewer cravings and less pain if they use both mindfulness techniques and medication for opioid dependence, according to Rutgers and other researchers.

The study, published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence...

A is for Alcohol, Addiction. O is for Opioids, Overdoses

Newswise — For several years, the national spotlight has shone on the need to prevent and rapidly treat opioid overdoses. But a new study suggests a need for more focus on the risk of alcohol overdoses among people who use opioids of all kinds, cocaine, marijuana and certain prescription drugs, too...

Post Vasectomy Pain: Opioids vs OTC

Newswise – Routine use of opioids after vasectomy doesn't improve pain control, but is associated with a substantial rate of persistent opioid use in the months after the procedure, reports a study in the October issue of The Journal of Urology®, Official Journal of the American Urological...

Opioid Use Disorder Undertreated with FDA Approved Medications

Newswise — Though research shows that medication-assisted treatment can help people who are addicted to opioids, the three drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are underused, according to a review of current medical data on opioid addiction in the U.S. This review appears in the...

Aberrant Drug Behaviors and Responsibilities of Primary Care

Primary care has a great opportunity to assess patients’ drug taking behaviors when they enter the healthcare system. It’s very rare that a patient would start their care with a specialist, and primary care is where most people would go outside of some sort of acute care setting. So, their ability...

Pain, Drugs, and Ethics

Pain remains one of the most common reasons that people seek medical attention in the United States. When pain was designated as the fifth vital sign, people were given the right to have their pain assessed and effectively treated by their healthcare professionals. A number of ethical dilemmas have...