Treatments for opioid dependence, such as methadone and buprenorphine, are effective. But some people who stand to benefit are missing out.
Naloxone, available as a nasal spray called Narcan or in injectable form, resuscitates 100% of people who overdose if administered quickly.
AP Photo/Patrick Semansky
Opioid overdoses killed 47,000 Americans in 2017 — more than gun violence. Many fewer would have died if they'd been treated with the life-saving drug naloxone, also called Narcan.
Scientists are working with artificial intelligence in hopes of being able to better detect cancer.
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While critics accuse companies facing lots of lawsuits of using bankruptcy as a sort of 'get of jail free card,' the reality of the legal procedure is more complicated.
Protests and lawsuits against opioid manufacturers are growing more common, but drug distributors are also facing scrutiny.
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Previously secret documents and data make it clear that many companies engaged in the distribution of prescription painkillers either skirted or ignored their legal obligations for years.
Every state bears the burden of the opioid crisis.
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State governments are leading the charge against opioid makers over their role in the epidemic. A team of researchers at Penn State examined just how much the crisis has cost them.
Naked mole-rats feel no pain when exposed to acid or capsaicin.
Roland Gockel, MDC
With the opioid crisis there is no doubt that physicians need safer, nonaddictive pain killers. Now new insights on how to create these are coming from an unlikely source: the naked mole rat.
A man injects drugs in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, Feb. 6, 2019.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward
In the midst of a public health crisis, with increasing rates of death from opioid overdose, the Ontario government is clawing back life-saving measures.
A man walks in a back alley in Vancouver’s downtown eastside, February 2019. More people fatally overdosed in British Columbia last year compared with 2017 despite efforts to combat the province’s public health emergency.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward
A policy response focused on reducing prescription opioids will not resolve North America's opioid crisis. And it is hurting many adults who live with otherwise unbearable chronic pain.
Lawsuits against Purdue say its drug Oxycontin played a key role in the opioid epidemic.
Reuters/George Fre
OxyContin maker Purdue has reportedly been mulling a bankruptcy filling, just as the first of around 2,000 lawsuits against it prepares to go to trial.
One in 3 people with severe depression do not respond to treatment.
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A safety committee convened by the FDA has declared esketamine safe for severe depression. But isn't this drug the same as ketamine, an illegal street drug? A medical anthropologist explains.
Many cases of lower back pain are best managed through education, exercise and manual treatment.
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The over-medicalization of back pain is a global concern. New research in Canada shows that people with lower income as well as rural and remote dwellers are less likely to access physiotherapy care.
Most people are fine with a drink, but when one becomes several, there may be a problem.
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Drinking among older adults is up. And while overdrinking may not pose an immediate threat of overdose, it is not healthy for seniors, many of whom take several medications and are at risk for falls.
The growing trend of sexualised injection meth use — colloquially referred to as ‘slamming’ — is a growing public health concern due to the dual risk of transmission of HIV and other blood-borne viruses via both injection and sexual transmission.
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The sexualized use of crystal meth by gay men is one of the key drivers of rising HIV rates and has many negative mental health consequences. Integrated sexual and substance use care is vital.
The biological pathways related to physical and emotional pain overlap.
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People who use painkillers for non-medical reasons often justify it as a form of self-medication for legitimate medical diagnoses such as depression, anxiety and stress.
Professor Emeritus of Health Policy and Management, York University, Emergency Physician at University Health Network, Associate Professor of Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto