Category: Addiction News

Nurses Speak About Risk For Opioid Addiction

One nurse in recovery says that easy access to medications heightens the risk of addiction among people in her occupation.

With long hours, stressful shifts and easy access to prescription medications, nurses are at high risk of opioid addiction, according to people who work in the industry.

According to a recent report by Fox13 Memphis, 114 nurses lost their licenses (or had them suspended) because of addiction issues over the course of one year in Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas.

“I would say 20 to 25 percent of nurses probably have an addiction problem,” said Deena Coleman, a nurse who has been in recovery for 10 years, and now helps other nurses connect with treatment. “I don’t know, 20 to 25 percent are seeking treatment. But it would be my guess.”

Coleman said that with medications everywhere, it’s simple for nurses to cross the line.

“We are very bright people. We can figure out how to get what we want. And I think nurses see things lying around. They see how things go,” she said. “And it takes them a very short time to say, ‘Okay, that would be easy to pick up and put in my pocket.’”

One nurse who spoke with Fox using the pseudonym “Sophie” said that a doctor she worked with got her started using opioids recreationally. Soon she was using them to get through her shifts.

“Eventually I took narcotics from work and was caught. And was charged with obtaining narcotic by fraud,” she said.

She said that she knows her drug abuse affected the patients that she was caring for. “I would be foolish to say no it didn’t. Yes, it did. It had to have. There was no way that I could use opioids,” she said.

In Mississippi, nurses need to document a year of sobriety—proven by drug tests—in order to be able to regain their license.

“They make it difficult for you to get your license back. Yes, it is fair. You are taking care of people,” said Sophie. Now six years sober, she is hoping to return to nursing. “There is absolutely hope,” she said.

In Massachusetts, the Board of Registration in Nursing runs a Substance Abuse Rehabilitation Program for nurses who are coping with addiction. Nurses who complete the program can keep their licenses after they complete the course.

David Kelly, a former registered nurse who became addicted to opioids said that he was lucky to be in a state with such a program. However, he said that opioid addiction needs to be talked about more openly among healthcare professionals.

“We have great recovery programs in this state, but our outreach needs to improve,” he said during a talk at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston in 2017.

View the original article at thefix.com

28 February 2019
Former Commissioner Blames FDA For Opioid Crisis: "No One Stopped It"

“There are no studies on the safety or efficacy of opioids for long-term use,” said former FDA commissioner David Kessler in a recent “60 Minutes” interview.

The former Food and Drug Administration commissioner expressed regret that the agency allowed drug companies to promote the idea that opioid painkillers were safe for long-term use in a recent 60 Minutes interview.

Dr. David Kessler was FDA commissioner during the ’90s, when Purdue Pharma’s prescription opioid OxyContin was approved. Shortly after, Purdue began an aggressive marketing campaign to both prescribers and consumers, including chronic pain patients.

In 2001, the FDA changed the indication on the label for prescription opioids to say that it was safe for long-term use, allowing drug companies to market them as such. However, Dr. Kessler now says that there were no studies on the long-term effects of regular, ongoing opioid use at the time.

“There are no studies on the safety or efficacy of opioids for long-term use,” said Kessler in the interview. “The rigorous kind of scientific research the agency should be relying on is not there.”

The former commissioner also appears to regret allowing the methods of the OxyContin marketing campaign, which were unprecedented in the prescription drug market. Soon, companies like Purdue were convincing doctors to prescribe more pills at higher doses — something that experts believe fueled the current epidemic of opioid-related addiction and overdoses.

Dr. Kessler is now on retainer by cities and counties that are suing Perdue Pharma and other drug companies for the damage caused by the opioid crisis. He officially left the FDA before the drugs were proclaimed safe for extended use, but laments that no one stopped it from happening.

“You have a system of pharmaceutical promotion that changed the way medicine practiced and no one, all right, stopped it,” he said. He later blames this on understaffing in the FDA marketing department.

Current FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb declined to be interviewed, instead providing a written statement.

“Many mistakes were made along the way,” it reads. “While the agency followed the law in approving and regulating opioids, we at the FDA include ourselves among those that should have acted sooner.”

On another 60 Minutes segment three days later, drug manufacturer Ed Thompson indicted “his own industry” and agreed with Dr. Kessler’s assessment that the label change was what sparked the opioid epidemic.

“The root cause of this epidemic is the FDA’s illegal approval of opioids for the treatment of chronic pain,” Thompson said. “Without question, they start the fire.”

Thompson himself is now suing the FDA in an attempt to force the administration to change the label on prescription opioids once again to say that it’s only safe for short-term use. As a maker of these drugs, he stands to lose billions if he’s successful. Thompson is going ahead with the suit, however, refusing to sell what he calls “snake oil” to consumers.

“You’re using high-dose, long-duration opioids when they’ve never been designed to do that,” he explained to the 60 Minutes host. “There’s no evidence that they’re effective. There’s extreme evidence of harms and deaths when you use them.”

View the original article at thefix.com

27 February 2019
Supreme Court Limits "Policing for Profit" in All 50 States

Though SCOTUS’ decision is groundbreaking, it will not bring civil asset forfeiture to an end.

The Supreme Court (SCOTUS) ruled unanimously that civil asset forfeiture – the practice of imposing fines, including the seizure of money or property, that law enforcement believes to be connected to crimes – is limited by the Constitution, and will grant individuals their day in court to fight for their rights.

All nine justices backed the landmark ruling on February 20 on the basis of the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, which bars the federal government from imposing excessive fines, while Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg cited the 14th Amendment, which applied the same rules to states after the Civil War, as precedents for their decision. Their ruling will not end civil forfeiture, but will allow those who are subjected to the practice to argue that such a fine exceeds the charges that prompted it.

Civil forfeiture is among the most contentious law enforcement practices in America, and one of the least regulated. In a typical case, prosecutors will accuse an individual of wrongdoing and then seize personal assets – everything from money and vehicles to homes and businesses – that they believe have a connection to a crime.

Law enforcement seizes the property and is allowed to keep the profits because the seizure is enforced through a civil proceeding, which as Slate noted, has fewer legal safeguards than a criminal trial.

Without said safeguards, police are allowed to seize property from individuals with even the slightest tangential connection to a crime; Slate, High Times and the New York Times cite the case of 72-year-old Ella Bromell, whose home was subjected to forfeiture and foreclosure by the city of Conway, South Carolina because drug deals took place on her property – deals which she personally fought to stop.

Though actual figures are difficult to determine, the practice can be extremely lucrative for law enforcement: a report from the Department of Justice found that state and local agencies earned $400 million from civil forfeiture in 2018, and New York Police Department alone brought in nearly $8 million from the practice.

State and local agencies have balked at reducing forfeitures, claiming that it allows them to pay for essential equipment. But as the Institute for Justice noted, it rarely results in a criminal conviction. Just 13% of forfeitures were linked to a conviction.

The Supreme Court’s decision came as a result of hearing Timbs v. Indiana, which involved Indiana resident Tyson Timbs, who pled guilty to selling heroin in 2015. He was sentenced to a year of house arrest and time in a drug dependency treatment program, as well as $1,203 in fines.

The state of Indiana later seized Timbs’ Land Rover, which it alleged had been used in the drug deals; the value of the vehicle was placed at $42,000 – approximately four times the amount of the maximum fine for such a charge – and Timbs fought back, citing the excessive fines in the Eighth Amendment. The Indiana Supreme Court disagreed, claiming that SCOTUS had never incorporated that clause as part of the 14th Amendment.

Writing for eight of the justices, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that the Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment “overwhelmingly” applied to the 14th Amendment. She also cited Harmelin v. Michigan as an example of fines being imposed for “retribution and deterrence,” and highlighted the history of excessive fines against African-Americans, beginning with rules imposed by Southern states against freed slaves in the wake of the Civil War.

Though SCOTUS’ decision is groundbreaking, it will not bring forfeiture to an end.

“People are still going to lose their property without being convicted of a crime, they’re going to have their property seized,” said Wesley P. Hottot, a lawyer with the Institute of Justice to the New York Times. “The new thing is that they can now say at the end of it all, whether I’m guilty or not, I can argue that it was excessive.”

View the original article at thefix.com

27 February 2019
Small Town Tackles Opioid Crisis With Treatment, Compassion

Despite its small size, Little Falls has taken control of their drug epidemic in by allocating $1.4 million in grants in the past five years.

As a 25-year-old in Little Falls, Minnesota, Monica Rudolph would steal money from her parent’s savings, little by little, so she could support her heroin use.

Eventually, according to BuzzFeed News, the money was gone. Monica’s parents discovered the empty box in their home, and that’s when her mother began calling treatment centers. But she kept hitting head ends — treatment centers saying they were closed for the weekend, or that they could not take Monica for a few weeks.

That’s when her mother decided to call the local hospital—and it worked. Monica was connected with a substance abuse counselor and was told to come in the next day to begin treatment.

“My hometown of 8,000 people was the one place in the state that picked up the phone,” Monica said. “Think of all the people like me who don’t have that hometown.”

Despite its small size, Little Falls has taken control of their drug epidemic in by allocating $1.4 million in grants in the past five years, BuzzFeed News reports. The money has been spent on limiting refills, increasing the access to medications to treat substance use disorder, putting treatment ahead of jail and taking basic public health measures.

The efforts paid off. BuzzFeed News reports that visits to the ER for painkillers—once the top reason for visits—isn’t even in the top 20 now. The hospital now has 100 patients on substance use disorder medications and has helped 626 people taper off opioids.

“One thing led to another,” Kurt DeVine, one of Monica’s doctors, told BuzzFeed News. “We realized we had to do a lot of things we weren’t doing, and that we had to do them together, or it wasn’t going to work.”

Now, DeVine and his colleague, Heather Bell, lead online seminars about how Little Falls has tackled the opioid crisis. They help towns to think bigger than just one thing.

“They get Narcan, or they get one little project and they think that is going to fix it,” DeVine tells BuzzFeed News. “There is no easy answer. It is a lot of work. If we were doing only one thing, just Narcan, our problem would be as bad as anywhere else. You have to do it all.”

In Little Falls specifically, the hospital formed a “Care Team,” made up of a social worker, a nurse, two doctors, and a pharmacist. The team’s focus is to help patients like Monica. They have also changed their thinking from treating substance use disorder as a crime to considering it a disease.

“If you find a person’s urine has a bunch of meth and not their pain meds, you make the assumption they are selling their pain meds to get meth,” Bell told BuzzFeed News. “But we don’t kick them out of our clinic. We say, ‘OK, what is going on? Do you need help?’ Then we get them into treatment.”

Now, Monica is taking the opportunity to give back to the community that helped her recover. Through training in a federal program, she will now serve as the hospital’s first “peer” counselor.

“My life has come full circle,” she told BuzzFeed News. “I’m really excited to give something back.”

View the original article at thefix.com

27 February 2019
Jussie Smollett Reportedly Told Police He Has An Untreated Drug Problem

The “Empire” actor has been heavily scrutinized after the Chicago Police Department alleged he may have orchestrated a hate crime against himself.

After allegations surfaced that Jussie Smollett staged a hate crime against himself, the actor and singer has reportedly told police that he has an “untreated drug problem,” according to Page Six.

The 36-year-old Empire actor, who is black and openly gay, has recently been the subject of media scrutiny after reporting a hate attack on Jan. 29 in which two men assaulted him. But upon investigating, according to the Chicago Tribune, law enforcement officials allegedly have reason to believe Smollett arranged the attack himself.

One of the two brothers Smollett allegedly paid to pull off the attack may have also served as his drug dealer, according to TMZ. Prosecutors in the case reportedly said that Abimbola “Abel” Osundairo dealt “designer drugs” to Smollett numerous times dating back to spring of 2018.

Previously, Smollett reported not having any alcohol or mental health issues when filling out legal forms. As such, there is speculation that Smollett may be claiming to have an untreated problem in order to use it as a defense in legal proceedings.

“This latest claim is only serving to confuse the issue more, because after he was released on a $100,000 bond, he visited the set of Empire to apologize for the situation, while still insisting he had nothing to do with the attack,” Inquisitr stated. “The claim has some wondering whether Smollett is already setting up his defense to argue that he cannot be held accountable for any part he may have taken in staging the attack.”

Smollett has been charged with filing a false report, and could potentially face up to three years in prison if he is found guilty.

The Cook County state attorney’s office said that “Smollett was charged with disorderly conduct for allegedly filing a false police report about the attack, according to the Chicago Tribune. “Hours earlier, the Chicago Police Department announced that Smollett was officially classified as a suspect in a criminal investigation for filing a false police report, a felony.”

Empire has also removed Smollett from two episodes of the show that have yet to air, according to the Chicago Tribune.

“The events of the past few weeks have been incredibly emotional for all of us,” executive producers of the show said in a statement. “Jussie has been an important member of our EMPIRE family for the past five years and we care about him deeply. While these allegations are very disturbing, we are placing our trust in the legal system as the process plays out.”

View the original article at thefix.com

27 February 2019
Jessie J Cries In Emotional Video About Depression, Vulnerability

The singer said that she hopes her emotional outpouring helps others find motivation to acknowledge their feelings.

Singer Jessie J became teary in an emotional Instagram video that showed her working out her feelings at the piano during an “off day.”

The video was posted on Sunday (Feb. 24). In a lengthy caption, the “Nobody’s Perfect” singer explained why she shared her vulnerable moment on social media.

“I’m not posting this for sympathy. Im posting this for anyone who needs to see it (I needed it),” she wrote. “This video is from yesterday I woke up. Feeling kinda off. I sat at the piano (which I’ve been avoiding) knowing it will bring some stuff up. I’m making it up and feeling my real feelings.”

Jessie said she went live to share the moment, not knowing that she would end up crying.

“But it’s important to be open that we are not always done up and feeling 100. All of us have our days. Yesterday was one of my weird emotional days,” she wrote.

Jessie said that she hopes other people will find motivation to acknowledge their feelings.

“In a time and a world (especially the social world) where sadly vulnerability is often seen as weakness where the younger generation are almost being taught to hide their real feelings behind a perfected edited image. Hence why anxiety and depression in kids is through the roof and only carries to their adult life if it doesn’t change.”

She pointed to the high suicide rate, particularly among young men, and seemed to say that expressing emotion is one way to combat it.

“We push our feelings to the bottom of our energy and hope it goes away. It won’t. Don’t define yourself on it. But stand with it, process it and learn from it. Find YOUR happiness. No one can make you happy but you. People can contribute. But ultimate happiness comes from within. It’s a personal journey,” she said.

She called on people to find a way to cope with their emotions—through exercise, creativity or anything else that works.

“To anyone young or older. Let your sadness / pain / Greif [sic] out. In your OWN way. Ever noticed so many people apologise as soon as they start to cry these days? Like it’s an inconvenience to FEEL. Draw. Sing. Paint. Walk. Write. Drive. Work out. Be still. Whatever it is that let’s you understand and process your real emotions do it.”

Most importantly, people should reach out for help when they need to, she said.

“TALK to people you love when you are down. Please do not suffer in silence. Life is way too short and ALWAYS GETS BETTER. I’m thinking of you and sending love to your heart.”

View the original article at thefix.com

27 February 2019
Pregnant and Scared to Get Treatment: When Conception Meets Addiction

If one needs proof that addiction is a disease and not a moral failing, look into the eyes of a woman who knows her behavior is harming her baby but still can’t stop.

With one in three individuals with opioid use disorder passing through the criminal justice system annually, court dockets across the country are overflowing with cases of illegal behavior fueled by addiction. Though such cases wrangle with the complexities of punishing individuals afflicted with what is increasingly seen as a disease that erodes free will, they are the bread and butter of the legal system. However, the recent Pennsylvania Supreme Court case known as In the Interest of L.J.B. adds another level of intricacy to the court’s decision-making process. The question asked in the case—Does drug use during pregnancy constitute child abuse? —is unpleasant to contemplate, but it is one of absolute importance.

The defendant in the case, a woman referred to as A.A.R., tested positive for illicit opioids, benzodiazepines, and marijuana when she gave birth to her infant, L.J.B., in January 2017. L.J.B. then required 19 days of inpatient treatment for drug withdrawal and was placed in the custody of Children and Youth Services, which alleged that her mother’s drug use during pregnancy was child abuse. On December 28, in a 5-2 decision, Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of L.J.B.’s mother, stating that Pennsylvania’s child abuse law clearly excludes fetuses in its definition of a child. While the issue may be settled in Pennsylvania, there is little doubt that similar cases will be heard across the country amidst the opioid epidemic.

Pregnant Women with Opioid Addiction — Overlooked and Undertreated

The case of L.J.B. and her mother has drawn national attention to women who simultaneously carry a child and the burden of an addiction—a group that has often been overlooked or ignored in the national discussions about the opioid epidemic. Few individuals in our society bear such a stigma as these women. As an addiction psychiatrist, I’ve heard harsher judgment passed on these patients—even from fellow healthcare workers—than on any others. This stigma permeates our medical and legal systems, creating dire consequences not only for these women, but also for their unborn children.

Pregnancy is unparalleled in its ability to motivate women towards healthier behavior, but approximately four percent of pregnant women still use addictive drugs. When I’m asked to evaluate a woman who is pregnant, I know her disease is severe before I’ve even laid eyes on her. If one needs proof that addiction is a disease and not a moral failing, look into the eyes of a woman who knows her behavior is harming her baby but still can’t stop. There is no better example of the ability of a chemical to overpower the deepest-rooted human instincts.

A recent report released by the CDC revealed that opioid addiction among women in labor quadrupled from 1999 to 2014, signifying the need for immediate action. Opioid addiction during pregnancy can create many problems for mother and child, including preterm labor, neonatal abstinence syndrome, and even fetal death. Tragically, pregnant women with addictions are less likely to receive prenatal care. Aware of society’s disdain, many don’t want to be stigmatized at the doctor’s office. Some mothers-to-be can’t even find a physician willing to treat them, and others are afraid of being reported to authorities due to laws that have arisen out of prejudice and misinformation.

Harsh Laws Harm Mother and Child

Twenty-three states already consider drug use during pregnancy child abuse. In three states, it’s grounds for involuntary civil commitment. Though some people think such laws deter women from using drugs during pregnancy, they don’t. If a woman’s addiction is so severe that it is active during pregnancy, laws that threaten arrest or loss of custody will not bring about remission. They also rarely bring about legal punishment, since the charges are dismissed or the convictions are overturned 85 percent of the time.

All that these laws do is cause pregnant women with addictions to avoid prenatal care visits or forego them all together. Tennessee discovered this the hard way, when it passed a law in 2014 making drug use during pregnancy punishable by up to a year in prison. The number of pregnant women seeking treatment for addictions fell drastically because they were too afraid of the legal ramifications. Thankfully, the law expired in 2016, but Tennessee’s legislature is now considering passage of a similar bill.

How to Help Pregnant Women with Addictions and Their Children

If our actual desire is to help pregnant women with addictions and their children, there are effective actions we can take. We can start with repealing counterproductive laws, and, as funding is being allocated to counter the opioid epidemic, we can earmark portions of it for these patients and create more treatment options for them. Only 19 states have programs specifically targeting the unique needs of pregnant women, and only 17 provide them with priority access to state-funded addiction treatment programs.

Healthcare providers can help by addressing their own stigma and stepping up to provide treatment to this vulnerable group. These women already face significant barriers to care, so finding a willing and caring healthcare provider shouldn’t be another challenge to overcome. There are also ways to avoid tragic situations like this in the first place. Out of all pregnancies in women with opioid addictions, eighty-six percent are unintended, so ensuring access to affordable and effective family planning services is essential.

For addicted women with unborn children, an invitation into care is far more effective than any legal threat we can muster. Let’s dispense with negative attitudes and legal barriers that keep these patients from seeking treatment. Ensuring that help is available when needed is the way forward, because the only way to aid an unborn child is to help its mother, regardless of how her actions might make us feel.

View the original article at thefix.com

27 February 2019
Kratom-Related Calls To Poison Centers Skyrocket

The majority of the calls to poison centers about kratom were made by men over the age of 20.

As the debate continues to swirl over the potential health benefits as well as hazards of kratom use, researchers have found that calls to poison control centers in regard to the use of the herbal supplement have increased more than 50-fold in recent years.

Their findings show that kratom-related calls to poison control centers across the country rose from 13 in 2011 to 682 in 2017. Nearly 10% of those calls involved an individual who experienced life-threatening side effects, and 11 individuals who made calls later died—though the majority of these were reported to have taken another substance in addition to kratom.

The researchers concluded their report by requesting enhanced information about kratom and increased regulation by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on kratom products.

The study, published in the journal Clinical Toxicology, sought to determine the number of calls to poison control centers that involved kratom, as well as demographic information of the callers. To find that information, researchers reviewed data on 1,800 calls from the National Poison Data System.

Though 2011 was designated as the beginning of the study period, 65% of the calls were received in 2016 and 2017, or the final two years of the study.

As Live Science noted, the majority of the cases (71%) involved men over the age of 20. Approximately 2.5% of the cases involved children under the age of 12 who were exposed to kratom, including seven newborns; five of that group reportedly experienced symptoms of withdrawal due to exposure in the womb, while another newborn received kratom through breastfeeding.

Approximately one-third of the cases required treatment at a health care facility, and as mentioned, nearly 10% reported life-threatening or disabling effects. The most commonly reported side effects were agitation, elevated heart rate and/or blood pressure, nausea and/or vomiting, and drowsiness or lethargy.

Those who took kratom with another drug were more than twice as likely to experience a more serious response than those who consumed kratom alone; of the 11 reported fatalities, nine were reported to have ingested other substances including alcohol, fentanyl, cocaine and benzodiazepines.

Kratom use has increased in recent years due to the widespread belief in its healing properties. According to the American Kratom Association, between 3 and 5 million people in the United States use it for various reasons.

Herbal supplements made from the plant, which can be found in Southeast Asia, have been used to treat chronic pain, depression and dependency on opioids or alcohol.

Proponents of kratom have found their support opposed by the FDA, which has not approved kratom for any medical use, and by the Department of Health and Human Services and Drug Enforcement Administration, which briefly attempted to ban the substance, though that pursuit was shut down by public outcry.

The researchers offered a number of recommendations for future action regarding kratom. They advised the medical community to disseminate more information about the risks of kratom, especially for women during pregnancy and breastfeeding.

They also advised the FDA to increase regulation of kratom products.

“At a minimum, they should be free of potentially harmful ingredients, provide a uniform strength of active ingredients and have appropriate labeling,” the researchers wrote in their study’s conclusion.

View the original article at thefix.com

27 February 2019
Sober Steering Wheel Could Save Lives

“My goal is for Sober Touch to go global and save lives all around the world,” said the device’s creator Lakesha Stines.

Lakesha Stines was a child when a close family friend who was nine months pregnant was killed by a drunk driver.

“I was only 10 years old when it happened,” Stines told the New Haven Register. “This had a great impact on my life to see her and her baby lying in that casket at such a young age.”

Decades later, Stines, now 42, has invented a product that she hopes will spare other families the same tragedy—the “Sober Touch Sensoring” steering wheel, which can detect alcohol in a person’s sweat.

According to Stines, the product will prevent drunk driving. When a person touches the wheel, the sensors read whether there is alcohol present in their sweat. The car will not start if a driver has alcohol levels that are over the legal limit.

“When you get in your car and you touch those sensors after drinking, it’s going to calculate your blood alcohol level through the perspiration in the palms of your hands,” Stines told WTNH News 8.

Stines has high hopes for the product. “My goal is for Sober Touch to go global and save lives all around the world.”

According to Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), about 30 people are killed each day by drunk drivers. Bob Garguilo, executive director of MADD in Connecticut, where Stines lives, says that the steering wheel could help reduce that number.

He said, “A device requiring a driver to prove they are sober before their car will start will save lives.”

It could be an important tool for advancing toward MADD’s ultimate mission of eliminating deaths caused by drunk driving. “MADD’s Campaign to Eliminate Drunk Driving was created so that one day there will be no more victims,” Garguilo said.

Stines says that the steering wheel will cost as little as $400, and could be available to be in cars by the end of the year. It’s not clear whether she envisions it in all cars or used by people who have previously been caught driving drunk—some of whom are required by court mandate to have a breathalyzer installed in their vehicles.

Stines has received recognition from local elected officials and also people in the industry who can help her bring the steering wheel to fruition.

She said, “People have been taking me to the next level—taking me to where I need to be because they believe in what I’m doing.”

Most importantly, she feels that her dear family friend is looking out for the project.

“I know she’s so excited in spirit about what I’m doing and I know she’s smiling, I know she’s like, ‘Go get ‘em.’”

View the original article at thefix.com

27 February 2019
Is Asthma More Common In People With Chronic Opioid Dependence?

A new study examined whether asthma rates are higher in those with chronic opioid dependence.

People with chronic opioid dependence experience asthma at nearly double the rate of the general population, according to a new study.

The study, published in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, examined asthma rates among chronic opioid users in a New York City hospital. Researchers found that among people who were opioid-dependent, the asthma rate was 17.2%, compared to 8.3% in the general population.

The results confirmed what researchers expected to see, study author Dr. Roshni Naik said in a press release.

“While some studies have shown that opioid medication can help with cough and shortness of breath in heart disease and advanced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, other studies have shown that opioids such as heroin worsen asthma. We hypothesized that there is higher prevalence of asthma among patients with opioid dependence who are addicted or dependent on prescription painkillers or heroin,” Naik said.

How opioids affect breathing depends on which opioids a person is using.

“The effects of opioid use on respiratory conditions are mixed—while licit opiates help with cough and the dyspnea of heart disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, illicit opiates may exacerbate asthma,” study authors wrote.

Naik explained in the press release how opioids can affect a person’s breathing. “Opioid drugs such as morphine can directly activate the release of a substance called histamine from cells, specifically mast cells, in our body. Histamine is involved in allergic reactions and contributes to itching, hives and swelling. Since more than half of asthma is allergic in nature, we postulated that opioids may be linked to asthma.”

Naik said that doctors and patients need to openly discuss opioid use (whether legal or illegal) and symptoms of asthma in order to make a comprehensive care plan.

“There is no current guideline on how to manage asthmatics on opioid medications. However, patients with severe asthma should follow up regularly with their primary care doctor or see an asthma specialist to maintain control of their asthma. Patients who are addicted to opioids should seek a healthcare provider in combating their addiction.”

Researchers also found that there were gender-based differences in how opioid use affected asthma. In general, women experienced asthma at higher rates, with the condition affecting 9.7% of women and just 6.9% of men in the general population.

Among people who are opioid-dependent, asthma affected 25% of females and 13.9% of males. This shows that women are more likely than men to have their breathing affected by opioid use.

“This suggests that women may also be disproportionately affected with asthma in the setting of opioid dependence,” researchers wrote.

View the original article at thefix.com

26 February 2019