In a first-ever randomized trial, patients at a short-term inpatient program began long-term outpatient treatment with buprenorphine before discharge, with better outcomes than detox patients. Three out of four people who complete an inpatient opioid withdrawal management program–commonly known as “detox”–relapse within a month, leading to a “revolving door” effect. Few successfully transition from the...
Patients are positively influenced by hospital advertising. Older patients and those with more restrictive forms of insurance are less sensitive to ads. Wealthy patients and patients who live far from a hospital respond well to advertising. A blanket ban on hospital advertising can lead to hospital readmissions. Should hospital advertising be banned? A few policymakers...
A research study into New Psychoactive Substances (NPS) – formerly referred to as ‘legal highs’ – provides new evidence about why young people were attracted to the drugs, and the health and social risks associated with taking them. The study was carried out by an interdisciplinary team of researchers from Queen’s University Belfast. The research...
Biomedical engineers at The University of Texas at Austin may have found a way for people to get better shuteye. Systematic review protocols — a method used to search for and analyze relevant data — allowed researchers to analyze thousands of studies linking water-based passive body heating, or bathing and showering with warm/hot water, with...
Virtually every day, millions of children and adolescents are being bombarded by sexually explicit direct-to-consumer advertising, despite pharmaceutical CEOs’ claims to the contrary. Leading business ethicist Denis Arnold from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte co-authored the study, “Self-Regulation in the Pharmaceutical Industry: The Exposure of Children and Adolescents to Erectile Dysfunction Commercials,” published...
A hard tackle on the football-field, a crash on your bike or a fall from a ladder in your home can easily cause a concussion, which eventually can cost your job – especially if you are in your thirties, and have a higher education. These are some of the findings in a large new register-based data...
The 2018 Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo(DRC), has been a very different kind of outbreak than the massive West African outbreak that occurred in 2014 and 2015. For starters, it is much smaller, with just over 2,000 cases compared to the more than 28,000 cases of the West African outbreak. Because of...
Wandering through the grocery store, it is easy to be overwhelmed by the numerous brands and health claims on the dozens of sugar substitutes. It can be particularly confusing for those with diabetes or pre-diabetes who must keep their blood sugar in check and control their weight. With the growing diabetes and obesity epidemic, there...
Everything is a toxin, or has the potential to be, in the field of toxicology. In the 1500s, Swiss physician Paracelsus, the father of toxicology, coined his famous dictum: “What is there that is not poison? All things are poison and nothing is without poison. Solely the dose determines that a thing is not a...
Livestock farming is destroying our planet. It is a major cause of land and water degradation, biodiversity loss, acid rain, coral reef degeneration, deforestation – and of course, climate change. Plant-based diets, insect farming, lab-grown meat and genetically modified animals have all been proposed as potential solutions. Which is best? All of these combined, say...
