Despite the magnitude of America’s addiction problem, addiction training is thin on the ground in US med schools. A decade of efforts mean the nascent field of addiction medicine is gaining some ground, but there are just 52 addiction medicine fellowships to go around. That…
Faced with the daunting prospect that over 500,000 in the US could die from an opioid overdose in the next decade, Baltimore City health commissioner Leana Wen draws hope from her city’s strategy.
For the last 4 years, a generic blood pressure drug containing a potentially carcinogenic substance—an inadvertent chemical byproduct—has been circulating the market.
A new spate of research has scientists hopeful that safer, non-addictive pain relievers are on the horizon, in the form of “novel opioids” or opioid alternatives, writes Robert F. Service. Driven by super-potent synthetic opioids, overdoses killed a record 72,000 people in…
Back-to-school shopping for EpiPens is a slog this year. A global shortage of the life-saving devices has parents, drug makers and regulators scrambling for solutions as demand spikes before school starts. The FDA declared the shortage in May; last week the agency extended…
In the urgent search for multipronged, coordinated solutions to the opioid epidemic ravaging the U.S., blockchain might be just the powerful weapon we need.
Hundreds of doctors received letters informing them that their patients have died after being prescribed opioids, and urging them to help curb the opioid epidemic.
The FDA allowed patients with ailments like back pain and migraines to be prescribed fentanyl drugs intended for cancer patients with high opioid tolerance.The class of drugs, 50 times stronger than heroin and up to 100 times stronger than morphine, put patients at risk of…
The good news is that opioid use disorder diagnoses in the US declined from 6.2 cases per 1,000 patients in 2016 to 5.9 in 2017, according to Blue Cross medical claims—and opioid prescriptions fell nearly 30% from 2013 to 2017.
Taking drug makers to court, cracking down on traffickers, supervised injection sites—this is how the US is tackling the opioid crisis. What’s woefully absent? “More and better treatment”—a glaring need that is being bypassed by Congress, governors and journalists alike,…
