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...Overdose Problem For the most recent study of overdose risk, researchers examined the medical records of nearly 10,000 chronic-pain patients being treated within a Washington State health plan between 1997 and 2005. Published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in January, the study found that 51 patients had experienced overdose - six of them fatal. The overall risk of overdose was small, but it was clearly associated with the dose of the medication originally prescribed: patients receiving the highest doses were nearly nine times more likely to overdose than patients on the lowest doses. "The overall risk among people...
What might have happened back in the Pliocene, say Fedorov and his colleagues, is that an initial bout of global warming led to severer hurricanes - a distinct possibility supported by recent research published in Science and Nature Geoscience - and severer hurricanes led to more warming. Although most of us think about hurricanes in terms of their impact on the land, they also wreak havoc on the sea, churning the water like giant mixers and forcing warm surface waters deeper. When that occurs in the central Pacific, "the ocean responds by sending that water to the East," where it rises again...
...severely injured troops were the most likely to receive morphine - and since this same group would be at a higher risk for developing PTSD - the finding is particularly striking. "It's incredibly exciting," says Dr. Glenn Saxe, associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who has conducted similar research in pediatric burn victims. "You could potentially be able to [reduce] the likelihood of getting a bad disorder like PTSD...
...Saxe's research suggests a mechanism by which opioids may affect PTSD risk. Trauma researchers have long known that social support is critical for recovery from PTSD, and that the brain's natural opioids are involved in feelings of nurture and bonding. Saxe found that the pediatric patients in the hospital who had the most anxiety about being away from their families were also the most likely to develop PTSD, but in those treated with opioids for pain, the risk was reduced. "The pathway was opioid dose reducing separation anxiety, and reduced separation anxiety reducing PTSD," says Saxe. (See pictures...
...because the how-tos in the treatment of chronic pain are much murkier, research suggests that still only a fraction of such patients receive the medication they need. While in some cases, doctors are using these powerful drugs too often, in others, concerns about misuse may have caused pain patients to suffer unnecessarily. "There is both overprescribing and underprescribing," says Volkow, who notes that, for instance, many dentists give opioids like Percoset too freely to teenagers after surgical procedures; in contrast, "you have individuals with very severe pain who are not given opioids or who are given doses that...