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The study offers the first comprehensive picture of drug and alcohol abuse and dependence in delinquent youth after detention. The investigators followed youth up to their late 20s. During the 12 years after detention, non-Hispanic white youths had 30 times the odds of cocaine use disorder compared with African Americans. Hispanic youths had more than 20 times the odds compared with African Americans. "Those findings are striking, considering the widely accepted stereotype of African Americans as the most prevalent abusers of 'hard drugs,'" said Linda A. Teplin, senior author of the study and Owen L. Coon Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Researchers found that substance use disorders were common and there were substantial sex and racial/ethnic differences. The study, part of the Northwestern Juvenile Project, will be published March 17 in the  American Journal of Public Health . "Our...

Led by researchers from the Ontario Veterinary College (OVC), the team found that homeless youth with pets are less likely to engage in potentially harmful behaviour, more likely to open up to veterinarians about their personal challenges and generally less depressed. However, the team found that pets can make it difficult for their owners to obtain social services. The study was published today in the journal  Anthrozoӧs . Its findings mirror what researchers had been hearing anecdotally , said Prof. Jason Coe, Population Medicine. “Those homeless youth with pets don’t want to risk incarceration or anything that would prevent them from being with their pets, so they are less likely to abuse alcohol or use hard drugs,” said Coe. He studies the human-animal bond and communication in veterinary care. “We also found those without pets are three times more likely to be depressed, though we have not yet determined if this is directly relatable to having a pet.” Among major...

A brand new examine analyzed insurance coverage claims from 2004 by means of 2012 for 155,297 adults present process 4 frequent outpatient surgical procedures -- carpal tunnel restore, laparoscopic gall bladder elimination, some minimally invasive knee surgical procedures, and hernia restore. Credit score: © stevecuk / Fotolia Physicians are prescribing extra opioid painkillers than ever earlier than to sufferers present process frequent surgical procedures, in accordance with new analysis from the division of Anesthesiology and Vital Care on the Perelman Faculty of Drugs on the College of Pennsylvania. Their work is printed on-line this week in  JAMA  concurrently with a significant new guideline from the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention (CDC) that calls on physicians to keep away from over-prescription of opioids for surgical sufferers and different sufferers with painful situations. Opioid abuse and...

"Our study shows that failed substance use policies can reverse life expectancy trends for large population groups or even countries," says Dr. Jürgen Rehm, Director of Social and Epidemiological Research at CAMH and first author of the study. "On the other hand, we also observed that effective policy changes are associated with substantial gains in life expectancy." The researchers investigated marked changes in life expectancy linked to substance use and related policies in three countries: the U.S., the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ( USSR ) and Mexico. In the U.S., prescription opioids are used in larger quantities than in any other country. Usage started increasing rapidly in the mid-1990s, partly as a result of allowing family doctors to prescribe short-acting opioids such as oxycodone for chronic pain and other relatively common diseases. Non-medical use of these substances and associated harms, including overdose deaths, increased alongsi...

We analyzed 87 revealed research on alcohol and demise from all causes. This analysis suggests we needs to be skeptical of claims that alcohol consumption provides well being advantages. Credit score: College of Victoria, Centre for Addictions Analysis of BC Many individuals imagine a glass of wine with dinner will assist them stay longer and healthier--but the scientific proof is shaky at greatest, in keeping with a brand new analysis evaluation. The findings, revealed within the March 2016 concern of the  Journal of Research on Alcohol and Medicine , might sound shocking: Numerous information tales have reported on analysis tying reasonable consuming to a spread of well being benefits--including a decrease coronary heart illness danger and an extended life. However the brand new evaluation took a deeper take a look at these research, 87 in all. And it discovered that many have been flawed, with designs suggesting advantage...

Depression is known to increase the risk of cardiovascular problems, but whether antidepressants, particularly SSRIs, increase or reduce this risk remains controversial. The results are significant because antidepressants are one of the most commonly prescribed drugs and cardiovascular diseases are a leading cause of death and disability worldwide. The study was led by the University's Division of Primary Care and is published in The BMJ. The researchers examined associations between different antidepressant drugs and rates of three cardiovascular outcomes in people with depression. Medical records of 238,963 patients aged 20-64 with a diagnosis of depression made between 2000 and 2011 were analysed using the UK QResearch database. Patients were monitored for occurrence of heart attacks, strokes or transient ischaemic attacks, and arrhythmia (an irregular heartbeat), and followed up until 2012. The researchers looked at antidepressant class, including tricyclic and relate...

Researchers at the University of Illinois found that 85 percent of people who met the criteria for a diagnosis of cannabis withdrawal during their intake assessment for treatment lapsed and used cannabis again within about 16 days, while other individuals stayed abstinent about 24 days before using again, said lead author Jordan P. Davis, a doctoral student in the School of Social Work. The 110 young adults in the study sample were near-daily users who consumed cannabis on average about 70 of the 90 days prior to entering drug treatment. Participants who experienced withdrawal symptoms reported an average of two symptoms, such as mood disturbances (48 percent), difficulty sleeping (40 percent) and restlessness (33 percent), according to Davis and co-author Douglas C. Smith. Whether cannabis use leads to physiological dependence and withdrawal symptoms when users quit has been a topic of fiery debate for years among people who oppose -- and those who favor -- more liberal marijuan...

"These findings highlight the importance of smoking cessation among this vulnerable population," says Anne Thorndike, MD, MPH, of the MGH Department of Medicine, lead and corresponding author of the report. "But they also indicate that continued weight gain associated with tobacco cessation is likely to contribute to a rise in the already high rates of obesity, diabetes and hypertension among people with serious mental illness." An increased risk of cardiovascular disease is a primary cause of the greatly reduced life expectancy -- up to 25 years less than the general population -- among those with serious mental illness. Both obesity and smoking are at least twice as high among adults with mental illness, and other risk factors such as hypertension, diabetes and elevated cholesterol levels are also more common. While a 2013 study led by another MGH research team found that the health benefits of quitting smoking were not eliminated by resultant weight gain, par...

Warnings that e-cigarettes are a cheap, tax advantaged product relative to heavily taxed combustible cigarettes have been repeatedly claimed in the scientific literature and lay media. These claims, however, do not appear to be based on empirical price data. The researchers say the pervasiveness of this claim may lead some policymakers to consider imposing e-cigarette taxes without accurate information. To find out, researchers led by Alex Liber of the American Cancer Society and the University of Michigan School of Public Health compared the cost of combustible cigarettes to those for two major kinds of e-cigarettes: disposable e-cigarettes (non-refillable); and rechargeable e-cigarettes, which can be refilled with nicotine liquid. The researchers found that on average, the price of a pack of combustible tobacco cigarettes was just over half the price of a disposable e-cigarette ($5.00 and $8.50, respectively). They also found that while the liquid nicotine used to refill e-ciga...

The study estimates that naloxone successfully reversed heroin overdose in 96 to 99% of cases. The study also found no empirical evidence that THN programs encourage heroin use. The evaluation of THN programs is challenging: randomized controlled trials are often considered the gold standard of scientific study, but conducting trials for THN would often be unethical and fraught with difficulties given the infrequency and unpredictability of overdose . To get around that problem, this study used the Bradford Hill criteria: a standard tool for assessing the impact of broad-based public health interventions where it is ethically not feasible or operationally impractical to conduct randomized controlled trials. The Bradford-Hill criteria were devised in 1965 by British epidemiologist and statistician Sir Austin Bradford Hill to assess causality when only correlational data are available. The application of the Bradford Hill criteria to the current evidence base from non-randomized ...