Category Archives: Addiction

Washington-Oregon Study Shows Frequent Inter-State Diversion of Recreational Marijuana

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Benjamin Hansen, Keaton Miller, Caroline Weber

A dried Cannabis bud, typical of what is sold for drug use- Wikipedia image

A dried Cannabis bud, typical of what is sold for drug use- Wikipedia image

Department of Economics
University of Oregon

MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?

Response: Recreational marijuana is now, or will soon be, legally available to 21%
of the United States population. A major concern among policy makers at
all levels of government is the trafficking or “diversion” of marijuana
from states where it is legal to other states. Though significant
measures are in place to prevent large scale drug trafficking by
licensed producers, consumers may easily purchase in one state and
travel to a different state for consumption or re-sale. Though this
policy concern has existed since medical marijuana became available in
the 1990s, the extent of this diversion by consumers has been unknown.

We take advantage of a unique natural experiment in the Pacific
Northwest: Oregon opened a recreational market on October 1, 2015, well
after Washington’s market opened on July 8, 2014. By examining the sales
of Washington retailers along the Washington-Oregon border in the months
before and after Oregon’s market opened, we can measure the extent to
which consumers from Oregon crossed state lines to purchase marijuana in
Washington.

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Heavy Marijuana Use May Harm Kidneys, But More Study Needed

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Dr. Julie H. Ishida MD Division of Nephrology, Department of Medicine San Francisco and San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center University of California

Dr. Ishida

Dr. Julie H. Ishida MD
Division of Nephrology, Department of Medicine
San Francisco and San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center
University of California

MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?

Response: Marijuana is becoming increasingly accepted in the United States, and animal studies suggest that marijuana could affect kidney function. However, data in humans are limited to case reports of acute kidney injury related to synthetic cannabinoid use and small cohort studies of relatively short duration.

Among 3,765 participants with normal kidney function in the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults or CARDIA study, my colleagues and I found that higher marijuana use was associated with lower kidney function at the start of the our study. However, we did not find that marijuana was associated with change in kidney function or albuminuria, which is a sign of kidney damage, over long-term follow-up.

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Medicaid Patients Who Overdose Likely To Get More Opioids

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Julie M. Donohue, Ph.D. Associate professor in Pitt Public Health’s Department of Health Policy and Management and Director of the Medicaid Research Center Pitt’s Health Policy Institute University of Pittsburgh

Dr. Donohue

Julie M. Donohue, Ph.D.
Associate professor in Pitt Public Health’s Department of Health Policy and
Management and Director of the Medicaid Research Center
Pitt’s Health Policy Institute
University of Pittsburgh 

MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?

Response: Medicaid enrollees have three times higher risk of opioid overdose than non-enrollees, and for every fatal opioid overdose, there are about 30 nonfatal overdoses, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). My colleagues and I analyzed claims data from 2008 to 2013 for all Pennsylvania Medicaid enrollees aged 12 to 64 years with a medical record of a heroin or prescription opioid overdose and who had six months of continuous enrollment in Medicaid before and after the overdose claim. The 6,013 patients identified were divided into two groups—3,945 who overdosed on prescription opioids and 2,068 who overdosed on heroin, all of whom received treatment for overdose in a hospital or emergency department setting.

We found that Pennsylvania Medicaid recipients who suffer an opioid or heroin overdose continue to be prescribed opioids at high rates, with little change in their use of medication-assisted treatment programs after the overdose. Opioid prescriptions were filled after overdose by 39.7 percent of the patients who overdosed on heroin, a decrease of 3.5 percentage points from before the overdose; and by 59.6 percent of the patients who overdosed on prescription opioids, a decrease of 6.5 percentage points.

Medication-assisted treatment includes coupling prescriptions for buprenorphine, methadone or naltrexone—medications that can reduce opioid cravings—with behavioral therapy in an effort to treat the opioid use disorder. Our team found that such treatment increased modestly among the patients using heroin by 3.6 percentage points to 33 percent after the overdose, and by 1.6 percentage points to 15.1 percent for the prescription opioid overdose patients.

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Almost 40% US Adults Used Prescription Opioids In Course of One Year

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Beth Han, MD, PhD, MPH
From Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Rockville, Maryland
National Institute on Drug Abuse, Bethesda, Maryland and
Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Washington, DC. 

MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?

Response: Using the 2015 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), this is the first study examining the prevalence of overall prescription opioid use in addition to misuse, use disorders, and motivations for misuse in the U.S. adult population. The 2015 NSDUH collected nationally representative data on prescription opioid use, misuse, use disorder, and motivations for misuse among the U.S. civilian, noninstitutionalized population aged 12 or older. In 2015, NSDUH started to collect data on overall prescription opioid use as well as data on motivations for prescription opioid misuse.

This study found that in 2015, 91.8 million (37.8%) U.S. civilian, non-institutionalized adults used prescription opioids, 11.5 million (4.7%) misused them, and 1.9 million (0.8%) had a prescription opioid use disorder. Among adults who used prescription opioids, 12.5% reported misuse and, of those reporting misuse, 16.7% reported a prescription opioid use disorder.

The most common reported misuse motivation was to relieve physical pain (63.4%). Misuse and use disorders were most commonly reported in adults who were uninsured, were unemployed, had low income, or had behavioral health problems. Among adults with misuse, 59.9% reported using opioids without a prescription, and 40.8% obtained prescription opioids free from friends or relatives for their most recent misuse.

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Acupuncture and Electrotherapy Following Knee Replacement May Limit Opioid Use

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Tina Hernandez-Boussard, PhD MPH, MS Associate Professor of Medicine, Biomedical Data Science, and Surgery Stanford School of Medicine Stanford, CA 94305-5479

Dr. Hernandez-Boussard

Tina Hernandez-Boussard, PhD MPH, MS
Associate Professor of Medicine, Biomedical Data Science, and Surgery
Stanford School of Medicine
Stanford, CA 94305-5479

MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?

Response: Opioid addiction is a national crisis.  As surgery is thought to be a gateway to opioid misuse, opioid-sparing approaches for pain management following surgery are a top priority.

We conducted a meta-analysis of 39 randomized clinical trials of common non-pharmalogical interventions used for postoperative pain management.

We found that acupuncture and electrotherapy following total knee replacement reduced or delayed patients’ opioid use.

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Opioid Prescriptions Common Among Cancer Survivors

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Rinku Sutradhar, Ph.D. Senior Scientist, Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences Associate Professor, Dalla Lana School of Public Health University of Toronto, Canada

Dr. Sutradhar

Rinku Sutradhar, Ph.D.
Senior Scientist, Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences
Associate Professor, Dalla Lana School of Public Health
University of Toronto, Canada

MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?

  • We suspected that pain was prevalent among survivors of cancer, but there were no comprehensive estimates on the magnitude of this prevalence. For example, recent work had reported pain prevalence among cancer survivors to be anywhere from 5% to 56%, which is quite a wide range.
  • To our knowledge, there has been no prior research conducted at the individual-level that specifically examines opioid prescribing rates for cancer survivors, compared to matched control groups who have no prior cancer diagnosis.
  • We also know that socio-economically disadvantaged populations are more at risk for opioid dependency, but previous studies have not examined cancer survivors who a part of this disadvantaged group, so this is an important knowledge gap to fill.
  • We found that cancer survivors have significantly higher rates of opioid prescriptions compared with their matched controls (who had no prior cancer diagnosis). In fact, after adjusting for other study factors, we found that the rate of opioid prescriptions was 22% higher among survivors.
  • MOST SURPRISING: This higher rate of opioid prescriptions persisted even among survivors who were 10 or more years past their cancer diagnosis (compared to matched control individuals who had no prior cancer diagnosis).
  • When we broke the cohort down based on the type of cancer, we didn’t see a significant spike in opioid prescriptions for breast cancer survivors compared to their non-cancer controls, but we did see higher opioid prescriptions for survivors of lung, gastrointestinal, genitourinary, or gynaecological cancers, compared to their controls.

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More Babies Experiencing Neonatal Drug Withdrawal After Exposure To Opioids and Psychotropic Meds

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Krista F. Huybrechts, M.S., Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School Epidemiologist in the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Boston, MA 02120

Dr. Krista Huybrechts

Krista F. Huybrechts, MS PhD
Assistant Professor of Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Harvard Medical School
Boston, MA 02120

MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?

Response: Neonatal drug withdrawal is common; in the U.S. about 1 infant is born every 25 minutes with signs of drug withdrawal. Neonatal drug withdrawal is a well-recognized complication of intrauterine exposure to illicit or prescription opioids, but other psychotropic medications can also cause signs of withdrawal. Psychotropic medications are frequently co-prescribed with opioids in pregnancy, and the use of both has increased significantly, raising concerns about an increase in the incidence and severity of neonatal drug withdrawal due to potential drug-drug interactions, but these risks are not well understood.

In this study, we found a 30-60% increase in the risk of neonatal drug withdrawal associated with co-exposure to antidepressants, benzodiazepines and gabapentin, compared to opioids alone; no significant increase in risk was observed for atypical antipsychotics and Z-drugs. Exposure to psychotropic polypharmacy along with opioids was associated with a two-fold increased risk of withdrawal.

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Chronic Cannabis Users Have Blunted Response To Stress

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Carrie Cuttler, Ph.D. Clinical Assistant Professor Washington State University Department of Psychology Pullman, WA, 99164-4820

Dr. Cuttler

Carrie Cuttler, Ph.D.
Clinical Assistant Professor
Washington State University
Department of Psychology
Pullman, WA, 99164-4820

MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?

Response: One of the most common reasons cannabis users report using cannabis is to cope with stress. In support of this, previous research has shown that acute administration of THC or cannabis dampens affective responses and subjective stress ratings. However, our study is the first to compare the stress response of sober cannabis users to non-users. More specifically, we randomly assigned 42 non-cannabis users and 40 cannabis users (who abstained from using cannabis for at least 12 hours prior to the study) to either a stress or no stress condition. Participants in the stress condition were required to perform multiple trials of placing their hand in ice water and counting backwards from 2043 by 17s. Each time they made an error they were given negative feedback and told to start again. Further, they were being video recorded and their image was displayed in front of them. Participants who were assigned to the no stress condition were simply required to perform multiple trials of placing their hand in lukewarm water and counting from 1 to 25. They were not given feedback or recorded. Participants were asked to rate their level of stress and to provide a saliva sample, from which the stress hormone cortisol was measured.

The results showed that, as expected, non-users in the stress condition had higher cortisol levels and higher self-reported stress than non-users in the no stress condition. In contrast, cannabis users in the stress condition demonstrated the same levels of cortisol as cannabis users in the no stress condition and their increase in self-reported stress was smaller than that of the non-users.

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Drug-Related Deaths Among Whites Soar But Alcohol and Suicide Mortality Stable

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Andrea M. Tilstra
Doctoral Student, Department of Sociology
Population Program, Institute of Behavioral Science
University of Colorado Boulder and
Ryan K. Masters
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology
Faculty Associate, Population Program and Health & Society Program
Institute of Behavioral Science
University of Colorado Boulder

MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?

Response:  “Despair” deaths – deaths from suicides, alcohol poisonings, and drug overdoses – have been a topic of interest in recent mortality research. For instance, existing findings suggest that mortality among white Americans has increased as a result of middle-aged whites experiencing elevated levels of despair and distress. These factors supposedly are driving white Americans to cope in unhealthy ways – excessive drinking, drug use, and suicides.

However, there were two major problems with the existing research that supported this narrative. First, men and women were analyzed together, despite the knowledge that overall mortality levels and trends differ significantly by gender. Second, all three of the aforementioned causes of death were pooled together and analyzed as one group. This is highly problematic if deaths from suicides, alcohol use, and drug use are not, in fact, moving in conjunction with one another. We addressed these issues and expanded previous analyses by analyzing cause-specific death rates for men and women separately, for years 1980-2014, and decomposing the trends into period- and cohort- based analyses.

We find that there are huge gender differences in U.S. white mortality rates and that trends in mortality from the three causes of death are quite distinct from one another. Recent increases in U.S. white mortality are largely driven by period-based increases in drug poisoning deaths and cohort-based increases in metabolic disease deaths.

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Prescription Opioids Increasingly Found In Fatally Injured Drivers

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Stanford Chihuri, MPH Staff Associate/Data Analyst Department of Anesthesiology, College of Physicians and Surgeons Columbia University Medical Center NY, NY 10032

Stanford Chihuri

Stanford Chihuri, MPH
Staff Associate/Data Analyst
Department of Anesthesiology, College of Physicians and Surgeons
Columbia University Medical Center
NY, NY 10032 

MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?

Response: In the past 2 decades, consumption of prescription opioids has substantially increased in the U.S. Prescription drugs may cause drowsiness and impaired cognition which may interfere with psychomotor functioning necessary during the operation of a motor vehicle. The current study assessed time trends in prescription opioids detected in drivers killed in motor vehicle crashes from 1995 to 2015 in 6 states in the U.S.

Results of the study showed that the prevalence of prescription opioids detected in fatally injured drivers has increased 700% in the past 2 decades.

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