http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. Regularly taking prescription painkillers, also known as opioids, is associated with a higher risk of erectile dysfunction (ED) in men, according to a study published online today in the journal Spine. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-long-term-prescription-painkillers-pain-linked.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Wed, 15 May 2013 11:31:17 EST news287836268 (Medical Xpress)—Research from the University of Adelaide suggests that mothers who eat junk food while pregnant have already programmed their babies to be addicted to a high fat, high sugar diet by the time they are weaned. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-maternal-diet-junk-food-addiction.html Health Tue, 30 Apr 2013 06:50:03 EST news286521850 (Medical Xpress)—A powerful anti-anxiety drug has been involved in a rising number of heroin-related deaths (HRDs) in Victoria in recent years, according to new research. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-alprazolam-heroin-deaths.html Addiction Mon, 04 Mar 2013 08:00:05 EST news281604482 Here's another reason why a healthy diet during pregnancy is critical to the future health of your children: New research published in the March 2013 issue of The FASEB Journal, suggests that pregnant mothers who consume junk food actually cause changes in the development of the opioid signaling pathway in the brains of their unborn children. This change results in the babies being less sensitive to opioids, which are released upon consumption of foods that are high in fat and sugar. In turn, these children, born with a higher "tolerance" to junk food need to eat more of it to achieve a "feel good" response. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-junk-food-pregnant-child-addict.html Health Thu, 28 Feb 2013 11:34:55 EST news281273656 (HealthDay)—The American Academy of Neurology's (AAN's) Top Five Recommendations in the Choosing Wisely campaign, established to promote high-value neurologic medicine and to foster physician-patient communication, have been approved and issued, according to a special article published online Feb. 20 in Neurology. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-aan-issues-wisely.html Neuroscience Mon, 25 Feb 2013 14:00:01 EST news281019179 More and more opioids are being prescribed for pain relief in Germany. This is the conclusion arrived at by Ingrid Schubert, Peter Ihle, and Rainer Sabatowski, whose study of a sample of inhabitants of the state of Hesse with health insurance from a large statutory provider is published in the latest issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-opioid-prescription.html Medications Tue, 12 Feb 2013 11:50:03 EST news279892024 Training bystanders to recognize and respond to drug overdoses can significantly reduce the number of fatalities, finds a study published in BMJ today. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-bystanders-drug-overdoses-deaths.html Health Thu, 31 Jan 2013 18:30:01 EST news278872355 Low testosterone levels occur five times more often among men who take long-acting instead of short-acting opioids for chronic pain, according to a new Kaiser Permanente study published in The Clinical Journal of Pain. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-men-long-acting-chronic-pain-meds.html Medications Thu, 31 Jan 2013 16:21:57 EST news278871590 For seniors who are constipated, the use of polyethylene glycol and lactulose are effective, according to a review of current treatments published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). The article reviews the latest evidence on the efficacy and safety of treatments to help doctors treat their patients. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-constipation-seniors-current-treatments.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Mon, 28 Jan 2013 12:00:02 EST news278589048 (HealthDay)—The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued a draft guidance document to assist the pharmaceutical industry in developing new formulations of opioid drugs with abuse-deterrent properties. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-fda-guidance-issued-abuse-deterrent-opioids.html Medications Thu, 10 Jan 2013 09:30:01 EST news277026886 (HealthDay)—For patients with one of five common cancers, 43.6 percent receive at least one prescription of opioids in the last three months of life, according to a study published in the Dec. 10 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-percent-cancer-patients-opioids-life.html Medications Thu, 13 Dec 2012 15:40:01 EST news274633899 (AP)—U.S. government health experts overwhelmingly voted against a stronger version of hydrocodone on Friday, questioning the need for a new form of one of most widely abused prescription painkillers. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-panel-opposes-pure-hydrocodone-painkiller.html Medications Sun, 09 Dec 2012 04:00:01 EST news274244638 (Medical Xpress)—A Viewpoint article published recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that the clinical practice of prescribing amphetamines, opioids, and benzodiazepines to treat chronic pain may be contributing to the increase in fatal drug overdoses and the likelihood that those drugs will be diverted to the illegal market. "Rethinking Opioid Prescribing to Protect Patient Safety and Public Health" was authored by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health researchers G. Caleb Alexander, MD, MS, and Daniel Webster, ScD, MPH, and Stefan P. Kruszewski, MD, of MD & Associates. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-overprescribing-opioids-impacts-patient-safety.html Medications Tue, 04 Dec 2012 06:37:42 EST news273825448 Nonprescription medications are just as likely a cause of poisoning as prescription drugs, according to a new study by Timothy Wiegand, M.D. from the University of Rochester Medical Center in the US and colleagues. Their work, which analyzes the data from the second annual report of the Toxicology Investigators Consortium (ToxIC), is published online in Springer's Journal of Medical Toxicology. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-nonprescription-medication-abuse-underestimated.html Medications Thu, 04 Oct 2012 13:27:12 EST news268575968 Governments around the world are leaving hundreds of millions of cancer patients to suffer needlessly because of their failure to ensure adequate access to pain-relieving drugs, an unprecedented new international survey reveals. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-global-pandemic-untreated-cancer-pain.html Cancer Sat, 29 Sep 2012 05:31:03 EST news268115442 (HealthDay)—Children and adolescents given intravenously (IV)-administered acetaminophen after major spine surgery have significantly less postoperative pain, compared with those given placebo, but administration of acetaminophen does not reduce the need for opioids, according to a study published in the Sept. 15 issue of Spine. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-iv-acetaminophen-eases-post-spinal-op.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Sun, 23 Sep 2012 15:02:35 EST news267631342 (HealthDay)—Using subcutaneously administered ketamine in a dose-escalating regimen as an adjunct to opioids and standard co-analgesics does not have any clinical benefit in relieving cancer pain, but it is associated with increased toxicity, according to research published online Sept. 10 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-adding-ketamine-opioids-doesnt-cancer.html Cancer Tue, 11 Sep 2012 17:20:01 EST news266600315 A centralized prescription network providing real-time information to pharmacists in British Columbia, Canada, resulted in dramatic reductions in inappropriate prescriptions for opioid analgesics and benzodiazepines, widely used and potentially addictive drugs. The findings are reported in a study in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-pharmanet-inappropriate-prescriptions-potentially-addictive.html Medications Tue, 04 Sep 2012 12:00:10 EST news265963481 (Medical Xpress) -- Adolescents who smoke cigarettes or use alcohol or marijuana may be at greater risk for subsequent abuse of prescription opioids as young adults, according to a new study by Yale School of Medicine. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-08-teens-abuse-prescription-opioids.html Addiction Tue, 21 Aug 2012 10:00:01 EST news264760046 A Rhode Island Hospital researcher has found that the use of electronic prescription drug monitoring programs (PMPs) may have a significant impact on the demand for drug treatment programs and how prescribers detect and respond to abuse of painkillers. The study by Traci C. Green, Ph.D., MSc, research scientist in Rhode Island Hospital's department of general internal medicine, is published online in advance of print in the journal Pain Medicine. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-08-pmp-demand-drug-treatment-painkiller.html Medications Thu, 16 Aug 2012 10:50:02 EST news264332018 Each year roughly 10 per cent of the Norwegian population are given a prescription for opioids. Until recently, the number of these who can be considered regular users of such medications was unknown. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-regular-users-strong-painkillers-norwegian.html Medications Tue, 31 Jul 2012 09:01:29 EST news262944083 The British Association for Psychopharmacology (BAP) has released fresh guidelines on the best methods to treat substance abuse and addiction in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, published by SAGE. A panel of experts has carefully researched the new, comprehensive guidelines, offering practitioners a detailed review of the evidence to help them optimise their clinical decisions. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-british-experts-addiction-treatment-guidelines.html Addiction Wed, 23 May 2012 09:53:55 EST news256985619 Mental distractions make pain easier to take, and those pain-relieving effects aren't just in your head, according to a report published online on May 17 in Current Biology. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-pain-relief-distraction-.html Medical research Thu, 17 May 2012 12:00:07 EST news256474692 Long term opium use, even in relatively low doses, is associated with almost double the risk of death from many causes, particularly circulatory diseases, respiratory conditions and cancer, concludes a study published in the British Medical Journal today. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-04-opium-linked-death.html Addiction Tue, 17 Apr 2012 18:30:02 EST news253891329 (HealthDay) -- Alcohol or sedative use during chronic opioid therapy (COT) for non-cancer pain puts patients at risk for adverse events such as respiratory depression or sedation, and the risk of concurrent use of central nervous system (CNS) depressants is not limited to patients with a history of substance abuse, according to a study published in the March issue of The Journal of Pain. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-04-alcohol-opioids-common-abuse.html Addiction Mon, 16 Apr 2012 17:25:11 EST news253815902 (HealthDay) -- Researchers have identified three previously unreported instances of severe opioid-induced toxicity in children following adenotonsillectomy for obstructive sleep apnea syndrome, according to a case report published online April 9 in Pediatrics. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-04-highlights-child-deaths-post-surgery-codeine.html Sleep apnea Mon, 09 Apr 2012 13:50:02 EST news253195977 Researchers at the University of Montreal's Sainte-Justine Hospital have identified how neural cells like those in our bodies are able to build up resistance to opioid pain drugs within hours. Humans have known about the usefulness of opioids, which are often harvested from poppy plants, for centuries, but we have very little insight into how they lose their effectiveness in the hours, days and weeks following the first dose. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-04-pain-drugs-effective.html Neuroscience Tue, 03 Apr 2012 17:00:08 EST news252688344 Prescriptions for narcotic painkillers soared so much over the last decade that by 2010 enough were being dispensed to medicate every adult in the United States around the clock for a month. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-networking-fuels-painkiller-boom.html Medications Mon, 20 Feb 2012 16:20:05 EST news248977195 Researchers at the Rothman Institute at Jefferson have shown that local anesthesia delivered through a catheter in the joint, intraarticularly, may be more beneficial than traditional opioids such as morphine and Oxycontin for pain management following total knee replacement surgery. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-benefits-local-anesthesia-knee-surgery.html Surgery Fri, 10 Feb 2012 05:50:01 EST news248073760 A study from Rhode Island Hospital is the first to systematically review and analyze the literature on the association between HIV infection and overdose risk. The findings show a 74 percent greater risk of overdose among drug users if they are HIV-infected. The researchers found that reasons for the increased risk are biological and behavioral, but may also include environmental and structural factors. The study is now available online in advance of print in the journal AIDS. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-12-link-hiv-infection-overdose.html HIV & AIDS Mon, 12 Dec 2011 11:30:02 EST news242911192