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Recent trials have suggested high doses of the GABA-b agonist baclofen can be effective in the treatment of alcohol dependent patients. These studies, coupled with individual patient testimonies, have given baclofen a high public profile, prompting the French authorities in 2014 to give permission to physicians to prescribe high doses baclofen for alcohol-dependent patients, pending results from ongoing randomized clinical trials. Even before that permission, more than 200,000 persons had used baclofen "off label" in France alone. Baclofen is licenced for use as a skeletal muscle relaxant for spasms (spasticity). Now researchers from the Netherlands have carried out the largest randomised controlled trial (RCT) on baclofen for alcohol dependence so far. Their report, published in the peer-reviewed journal European Neuropsychopharmacology (December 2016), indicates that the effects of the drug may add little to the effect provided by psychosocial treatment. 151 alcoholi...

The relationships between prisoners enrolled in "therapeutic communitie s," groups that focus on rehabilitation from drug and alcohol addiction, are key to those programs' effectiveness, said researcher Keith Warren, an associate professor of social work at The Ohio State University. And the theory behind these efforts rests on the idea that peer interaction will support learning that displaces ingrained (and unhealthy) ways of thinking that stand in the way of people leaving addiction behind. In this study, the first to test that theory, Warren and co-author Nathan Doogan, a postdoctoral researcher in Ohio State's College of Public Health, analyzed tens of thousands of written communications collected at four minimum-security facilities in Ohio with programs designed as an alternative to traditional prison time. The more a participant's language choices changed during rehab, the less likely he was to return to prison, they found. The study was published ...

There is a common misperception that widespread marijuana use is limited to younger generations. However, the Baby Boomer generation has reported higher rates of substance use than any preceding generation. "Given the unprecedented aging of the U.S. population, we are facing a never before seen cohort of older adults who use recreational drugs," says Benjamin Han, MD, MPH, a geriatrician and health services researcher at the Center for Drug Use and HIV Research (CDUHR) and in the Division of Geriatric Medicine and Palliative Care at NYU Langone Medical Center (NYULMC). "With the increased availability of legalized marijuana, there is an urgent need to understand the prevalence of its use and also its effects among older generations," continued Dr. Han. "The paucity of knowledge in this area constrains the care for a changing demographic of older adults with higher rates of substance use." To address this, Dr. Han and his team led a study, "...

Tobacco smoking is a public health issue around the world, estimated to cause 5 million deaths annually. However, there are few data on the effects of long-term, low-intensity smoking and a perception among some people that such a level can be safe. Maki Inoue-Choi, Ph.D., M.S., of the National Cancer Institute, Rockville, Md., and coauthors examined associations between long-term smoking of fewer than one or 1 to 10 cigarettes per day with the risk of death among current and former smokers. The study included 290,215 older adults (ranging in age from 59 to 82) who completed the 2004-2005 questionnaire in the National Institutes of Health -- AARP Diet and Health Study. The questionnaire assessed lifetime smoking intensity during previous age periods from less than 15 years old to 70 or more. Among the group, there were 22,337 current smokers (7.7 percent), 156,405 former smokers (53.9 percent) and 111,473 never smokers (38.4 percent). Compared with individuals who never smok...

Marijuana joint. Credit score: © johny87 / Fotolia Stress-free with a joint round kids isn't very sensible. Not solely do children inhale dangerous secondary smoke within the course of, however the psychoactive chemical compounds within the drug are taken up by their our bodies as nicely. This warning comes from Karen Wilson of the Icahn Faculty of Medication at Mount Sinai and the American Academy of Pediatrics Julius B. Richmond Middle of Excellence within the US. She led the primary examine displaying that it's potential to select up traces of THC, the first psychoactive chemical in marijuana, within the urine of kids uncovered to secondary marijuana smoke. The findings are printed in Springer Nature's journal  Pediatric Analysis . The 2 main energetic parts in marijuana are the psychoactive chemical delta9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), and the nonpsychoactive cannabidiol (CBD). Earlier analytical strategies had been largely d...

Approximately 600,000 people are detained in compulsory drug detention centres without due process in East and South East Asia each year, despite reported human rights abuses and lack of evidence that they effectively treat addiction. This study is the first to examine the risk of relapse from compulsory centres and concludes that they have no role in the treatment of opioid addiction. It strongly supports international calls for all countries to eliminate compulsory drug detention centres, and scale up evidence-based treatments such as methadone in voluntary community treatment settings. In 2012, the United Nations called for the closure of compulsory drug detention centres, which do not have legal oversight and detain people for prolonged periods on the basis of suspected or actual drug use, without court process. They are similar to prisons in that they result in concentrated settings of people who use drugs and, due to their ineffectiveness, result in alarming rates of drug...

The study performed magnetic resonance imaging of the brain structure on young and healthy, but heavy-drinking adults who had been heavy drinkers throughout their adolescence, as well as on age-matched light-drinking control participants. They participated in three cross-sectional studies conducted over the course of ten years, in 2005, 2010 and 2015. The participants were 13 to 18 years old at the onset of the study. All participants were academically successful, and the prevalence of mental healt h problems did not differ between the two groups. Although the heavy-drinking participants had used alcohol regularly for ten years, approximately 6-9 units roughly once a week, none of them had a diagnosed alcohol use disorder. Magnetic resonance imaging of the brain revealed statistically significant differences between the groups. Among the heavy-drinking participants, grey matter volume was decreased in the anterior cingulate cortex bilaterally as well as in the right insula. ...

"There's been a lot of attention recently on the need to incorporate mental health screening into prenatal care, and it has largely focused on identifying women who are at risk of postpartum depression," says Sarah Desmarais, an associate professor of psychology at NC State and co-author of a journal article on the work. "Our study has two important findings that are relevant to that discussion," Desmarais says. "First, we found that women are at risk of significant postpartum mental health problems other than depression -- stress and anxiety are serious issues that merit attention. Second, by incorporating questions about a woman's history of drug use, we can help health-care providers more accurately identify women who are at risk of postpartum stress and anxiety -- and take steps to provide the necessary care." The study was not designed to focus specifically on drug use, but was instead aimed at answering the broader question of whether w...

The study, "Maternal Deaths from Suicide and Overdose in Colorado, 2004-2012," found that of 211 maternal deaths, 30 percent were from self-harm, defined as suicide and nonintentional overdose deaths occurring during pregnancy and the first year after giving birth. In Colorado, the mortality rate from self-harm during the period was 9.6 per 100,000 live births. About 90 percent occurred in the postpartum period. It is not known how the demographics and characteristics of maternal deaths in Colorado compare to other states or if such self-harm deaths are becoming more common. According to the study, in 2012 suicide was overall the most common cause of death in Colorado among those age 10 to 44. "There is focus nationally on reduction in maternal mortality, and the majority of this effort has focused on in-hospital causes of death such as postpartum hemorrhage," said lead author Torri Metz, MD, assistant professor of maternal fetal medicine at the CU School of ...

A new study by researchers at the Penn Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science (TCORS) at the Annenberg School for Communication found that warning labels featuring photos of real smokers who were harmed by their habit are more effective in getting smokers to quit than the text-only labels currently in use. At least 77 nations around the world use images as a part of their cigarette warning labels. The United States does not. In 2011, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was poised to roll out a series of pictorial warning labels for use on tobacco products as mandated by the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (FSPTCA). However, a legal challenge by the tobacco industry led to t hese labels being rejected in large part because they were emotional rather than factual. These images showed things like fictional photographs of smokers and simulations of diseased body parts. In response, the FDA withdrew their original labels and began a research campaign to rethin...