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Can psilocybin—a hallucinogenic chemical obtained from mushrooms—improve mental health in struggling Veterans? Arizona’s legislature may grant $30 million to help researchers find solutions via controlled trials. By studying whole mushrooms and their 100s of compounds, vs the synthetic, 1 molecule...
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Black patients: prescribed opioids less frequently yet undergo more urine drug screenings. The Journal of Clinical Oncology reports on various healthcare disparities affecting older patients at end of life. Findings from over 300,000 decedents >65 years with poor-prognosis cancers include:
- Receiv...
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The Oklahoma Study of Native American Pain Risk is a first of its kind. Its goal? To understand why Native Americans have higher levels—up to 3 times more than non-Hispanic whites—of chronic pain. A 5 year, $2.75 million grant from the National Institutes of Health will allow exploration of possible...
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Researchers surveyed the use of services—PCP visits, a pharmacist, a school nurse, outpatient appointments for injury—by over 8,000 adolescents (age 11-15) culled from 84 UK schools. Among the findings, adolescents reported
- Pain and suicidality: 9%
- Suicidality alone: 11%
- Pain alone: 13%
- Nei...
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Dr. Kevin Zacharoff, faculty member and clinical instructor at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University in New York, discusses “official” definitions of pain, and what he hopes they will achieve.
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A study out of Sweden and reported in the Journal of Pain Research noted disparities in outcomes from systemic reviews of interdisciplinary pain treatment. The researchers examined the PubMed, Epistemonikos, and Cochrane Library databases, along with the International Prospective Register of...
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Pre-COVID, half of Australian women giving birth utilized nitrous oxide for pain relief, 40% had epidurals, and 12% used opioids. The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology reports that post-COVID, nitrous oxide was withheld to lower transmission risk, and opioid use...
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The American Journal of Managed Care has published an article highlighting the need for policy changes in prescribing opioids postsurgery. The level of opioid dispensing in morphine milligram equivalents in 2019 was nearly 3 times greater than in 1999. In an effort to encourage use of pain...
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Researchers in England examined the electronic health records of 2.4 million people and found 486,149 people with prior infection vs 1.9 million people with no COVID. The results, published in Nature Medicine, note newer symptoms of long term COVID including:
- Amnesia
- Apraxia
- Bowel...
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The 2016 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain was controversial; did it change minds? Apparently it did get practitioners to think “nonopioids” more often. An article published in JAMA Network Open presented information based on cohort study...