Our sewage reveals a lot more about us than what we ate over the weekend. Scientists at Murray State University in Kentucky have been studying sewer water for the past few years, hoping to pinpoint the level of drug use within local communities. Their latest research, presented this week at the American Chemical…
More people are dying from drug overdoses in the U.S. than ever before, according to a new preliminary report released Wednesday by the federal government. There were an estimated 72,287 drug overdose deaths last year, the report found, with the majority caused by opioids. The toll is yet another record high.
For the first time in U.S. history, a death row inmate has been killed with a lethal injection containing fentanyl, a potent drug at the heart of the ongoing opioid overdose crisis.
The State of New York is suing Purdue Pharma, one of the largest manufacturers and distributors of opioid painkillers, for what it says is the company’s role in driving the opioid crisis. On Tuesday morning, the attorney general’s office announced that it was filing a lawsuit against the pharmaceutical company for…
A recent survey suggests that some people struggling with opioid addiction might be turning to a tragically desperate method to get more prescription painkillers: Hurting their own pets. And veterinarians themselves may be abusing opioids or helping to illegally sell them.
People are increasingly turning to an unconventional drug to supplement their opioid addiction, suggests a new report published this week. And some are getting sick as a result. Since 2014, hundreds of people have apparently rung up their local poison control center in connection to tianeptine, an antidepressant not …
Despite a growing awareness of the dangers and risks of opioid addiction among doctors and patients, the average amount of opioids prescribed to Americans over the past decade has barely budged, suggests a new study published Wednesday in The BMJ. But it’s difficult to know just how much this reality accounts for the…
Scientists are scrambling to find painkillers that can ease suffering without the addictive potential of opioids. One potential solution, a new study out Wednesday in Science Translational Medicine suggests, might involve creating modified versions of the common wrinkle treatment botox, otherwise known as botulinum…
People living with opioid addiction are increasingly using the inhalation method to get high, warns a new review published Monday in JAMA Neurology. The technique known as “chasing the dragon,” which involves heating up heroin and inhaling its fumes through a pipe, may be safer in some ways than injection, but it…
Federal prosecutors have charged hundreds of people with allegedly defrauding the US government’s health care system out of a combined $2 billion. And many of the charged are doctors who are also being accused of aiding the opioid crisis by illegally prescribing more than 13 million doses of powerful, addictive…
The death toll of the US opioid crisis has been seriously lowballed, suggests a new study published Wednesday in Public Health Reports. It found that many states have failed to identify fatal drug overdoses specifically caused by opioid use over the past two decades. Since 1999, there might have been as many as 70,000…
The state of Massachusetts has filed a lawsuit against Purdue Pharma LP, the company that developed the semisynthetic opioid OxyContin in 1995 and aggressively marketed it while downplaying the risk of addiction. It’s part of a growing backlash to Purdue, a pharmaceutical giant the New Yorker characterized as an …
On Tuesday, the National Institutes of Health revealed its new plan to tackle the opioid crisis, which it dubbed the Helping to End Addiction Long-term, or HEAL, initiative. Among the ideas presented are research programs devoted to better understanding chronic pain, developing new non-opioid painkillers and addiction…
It’s no secret that opioids kill more Americans annually than ever before. But a new study published Friday in JAMA Network Open highlights just how devastating the crisis has been to certain age groups. In 2016, it found, opioid overdoses were responsible for a fifth of all deaths among people in their mid-20s to…
The US likely experienced its third consecutive year of a sagging life expectancy in 2017, based on preliminary data published this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Increased deaths from suicide and drug overdose probably played a role in the decline.
New research out today in the New England Journal of Medicine highlights yet another impact of the opioid crisis: More people have gotten the organ donations they’ve needed in recent years because of more deaths caused by drug abuse and overdose. The research also suggests these donated organs aren’t any less safe…
Walmart has announced that the company will roll out new restrictions on opioid prescriptions this summer at Walmart and Sam’s Club stores, and will require e-prescriptions for opioids by the year 2020. The move comes as the opioid epidemic continues to kill more and more Americans every year.
Over the past few years, a hospital in Portland, Oregon has dramatically shifted its approach to treating patients with substance use disorders, including opioid addiction. And since then, the hospital has undergone a “sea change” in the way its medical staff think about and address addiction, according to a study…
The US government is earnestly trying to tackle the opioid crisis, which is killing tens of thousands of Americans each year, but there’s no easy way to tell whether its efforts are even working, says a new report by a federal watchdog agency.
A comprehensive report published this week in JAMA finds that the US has overall become a safer place to live over the past 25 years. But the report also reveals that in several states and among certain age groups, it’s only become deadlier.
