Word: drug
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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Although opioids have a reputation for being instantly addictive, studies find that the average patient does not enjoy the feeling of being on the drug; even among recreational users, most who try it don't get hooked. Patients who are prone to addiction are typically those who have histories of emotional trauma, mental illness or prior substance misuse. (See how to prevent illness...
...chronic-pain patients without a history of substance problems became addicted to opioids during treatment. The review included 4,893 mostly middle-aged chronic-pain patients, who were treated with opioids for between six months and four years. "This suggests that people who do not have a history of drug abuse or addiction are not highly like to develop [addiction] under physician care," says Meredith Noble, lead author of the review and senior research analyst at the ECRI Institute, a health care research and consulting group near Philadelphia...
...Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, takes a more sober view of the findings, pointing out that 18 of the 26 studies in Noble's review failed to mention addiction. The review authors say they assumed the omissions meant that those studies did not find any cases of addiction, but Volkow says it could mean that they simply didn't look for it. (See pictures from an X-ray studio...
Still, Volkow does not deny that age and prior addiction are key risk factors for drug problems; addiction is primarily a disorder of youth. Based on this review and other research involving middle-aged or older people screened for pre-existing drug problems, Volkow says, "Under those conditions, you can say that the risk [of addiction] is less than 3% [in people with no history of drug abuse...
...some cases, however, undertreated pain may contribute to a situation that looks like addiction; patients ask for higher and higher doses and appear to be drug-seeking, when in fact they are looking for effective pain relief...