Drug abuser

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are associated with a wide range of health problems and health-compromising behaviors, including drug use, but are understudied in sub-Saharan Africa. Further, some data suggest that some types of ACEs are more strongly associated with outcomes than others. We investigated associations between different types of ACEs and recent drug use among 2,011 women living in Katsina State, Nigeria. This community-based survey included questions on ACE exposure, modifiable individual-level risk and promotive factors, and past-year drug use...

Background and objective Designing a consistent preventive drug abuse program and evaluating the educational needs of diverse target groups, school curricula, and new instructional materials customized to a country's socioeconomic and cultural characteristics should be used. This research aims to assess the influence of an educational program on university students' awareness of drug abuse. Methodology A cross-sectional study using a pre-test questionnaire with predetermined questions was conducted with 102 participants...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: A lack of consensus on the optimal outcome measures to assess opioid use disorder (OUD) treatment efficacy and their precise definition and computation has hampered the pooling of research data for evidence synthesis and meta-analyses. This study aimed to empirically contrast multiple clinical trial definitions of treatment success by applying them to the same dataset. METHODS: Data analysis used a suite of functions, developed as a software package for the R language, to operationalize 61 treatment outcome definitions based on urine drug screening (UDS) results...

BACKGROUND There has been an increase in the use of inhalation methods to abuse drugs, including freebasing crack cocaine (alkaloid) and inhaling methamphetamine vapor. This report is of a 25-year-old man with a history of substance abuse presenting with pneumomediastinum due to methamphetamine vapor inhalation. Acute pneumomediastinum is an extremely rare complication of methamphetamine use. CASE REPORT A 25-year-old man was treated for polysubstance abuse following 9 days of methamphetamine abuse. EKG did not show any ST &T change...

Subclavian artery injuries are sporadic, and the most common aetiology is trauma. Self-injury of the vessel in those misusing intravenous drugs is a rare complication, as most reports describe injury to the femoral artery. Thus, erosion and potential rupture of the arterial wall is possible due infection and phlegmon or abscess formation. We present a case of a young, female, hemodynamically unstable intravenous drug user admitted to the emergency department with a life-threatening, purulent haemorrhagic mass located at her right lateral cervical region...

BACKGROUND: Menthol-flavored electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) are a focus of public health and regulatory policy considerations. The abuse liability of five menthol-flavored pod-based ENDS was compared to combustible cigarettes, and switching potential of ENDS was also evaluated. METHODS: 215 US adults who smoke cigarettes (34.4% female; mean age[SD]=29.60[8.75]; 40.9% non-Hispanic White; mean cigarettes/day[SD]=12.04[8.52]) completed a randomized 6-arm within-person cross-over product-use study...

Opioid Agonist Treatment is the cornerstone of minimising harms related to opioid use, however its uptake is limited by a tightly regulated and stigmatising treatment environment. The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated relaxation of some treatment restrictions, with global evidence pointing to more patient-centred care in this time. In light of local evidence to support the safety of increased access to takeaway doses and a precedent set by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration, we recommend adoption of the Australian Interim Medication Assisted Treatment of Opioid Dependence guidance in Australia...

INTRODUCTION: Research has established natural recovery (NR) as an important pathway to substance use recovery. Studies investigating correlates of NR have mainly focused on demographic and substance use variables rather than life circumstances. This study seeks to better understand the phenomenon of natural recovery by (i) validating the international scientific literature concerning demographic and substance use indicators of NR in Flanders and (ii) assessing the additional explanatory power of recovery strengths and barriers during active addiction, controlling for demographic and substance use covariates...

BACKGROUND: Novel psychoactive substances (NPS) are a group of substances, mainly of synthetic origin, characterized by toxicological properties extremely dangerous. The main difficulty in recognizing NPS in seizures and biological samples lies in their dynamic nature, related to the continuous synthesis and introduction on the market of new drugs, often with very similar structures to existing ones. The aim of this study was the creation of a robust and versatile method for the analysis of traditional drugs and NPS in different matrices...

The neurotransmitter serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine, 5-HT) is implicated mainly in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and reported to be responsible for several processes and roles in the human body, such as regulating sleep, food intake, sexual behavior, anxiety, and drug abuse. It is synthesized from the amino acid tryptophan. Serotonin also functions as a signal between neurons to mature, survive, and differentiate. It plays a crucial role in neuronal plasticity, including cell migration and cell contact formation...

Violence against women (VAW) is a significant public health and human rights issue, with an estimated 736 million women globally experiencing VAW. Consistent evidence demonstrates that substance use is associated with VAW and that participation in substance use treatment programs is associated with reduction in substance use-related violence. While evidence demonstrates the ability to address VAW through substance use treatment programs, less attention has been paid to geographic access to substance use programs...

INTRODUCTION: Prenatal drug exposure (PDE) is one of the most important causes of child harm, but comprehensive information about the long-term outcomes of the families is difficult to ascertain. The Joining the Dots cohort study uses linked population data to understand the relationship between services, therapeutic interventions and outcomes of children with PDE. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: Information from routinely collected administrative databases was linked for all births registered in New South Wales (NSW), Australia between 1 July 2001 and 31 December 2020 (n=1 834 550)...

Etomidate (ETO) is used as an anesthetic in surgery, but it is being abused in some populations. The damage caused by long-term intake of ETO to intestinal and brain functions is not yet clear, and it remains to be determined whether the drug affects the central nervous system through the gut-brain axis. This study aimed to investigate the neurotoxic and gastrointestinal effects of ETO at doses of 1mg/kg and 3mg/kg in mice over 14 consecutive days. The results showed that long-term injection of ETO led to drug resistance in mice, affecting their innate preference for darkness and possibly inducing dependence on ETO...

BACKGROUND: Nonadherence to antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) is a prevalent issue in India, contributing to suboptimal seizure control, higher morbidity and mortality, increased hospitalization rates, and a substantial effect on the overall quality of life for individuals with epilepsy. OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to measure the prevalence of medication adherence among individuals with epilepsy in India and to identify factors associated with nonadherence. METHODS: Following PRISMA guidelines, we searched PubMed, Scopus, Embase, and Google Scholar for studies on AED adherence in India...

Zolpidem is a widely used hypnotic. Dependence on zolpidem due to the induction of euphoria is a rare condition, while intranasal misuse of zolpidem is a rather new phenomenon. We present the first case of a patient who developed zolpidem dependence, which was associated with the prompt onset of euphoria exclusively following intranasal use. Mr. A was a 51-year-old polydrug abuser with antisocial personality disorder and a physical dependence on zolpidem. Over several years, he consumed 500 mg of the drug daily, usually divided into 30 mg doses, exclusively via the nasal route because unlike the oral administration of the same dose of the drug, intranasal administration induced euphoria...

BACKGROUND & AIMS: In clinical practice, the diagnosis of alcohol-associated hepatitis (AH) is mostly based on non-invasive criteria, which were defined at a consensus conference by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). These criteria were recently modified by adding C-reactive protein (CRP) and termed NIAAAm-CRP criteria, which showed superior diagnostic accuracy for presence of alcohol-associated steatohepatitis (ASH) on liver histology. The aim of our study was to validate the diagnostic accuracy of both original NIAAA criteria and NIAAAm-CRP criteria for presence of ASH on liver histology in an independent cohort...

Borax is strictly regulated in the food processing and pharmaceutical industry due to its physiological toxicity, and the development of a direct analytical method is essential for effectively monitoring the borax abuse. In this work, the fluorescence properties of flavonoids, including flavones, isoflavones and flavonols, were systematically investigated from aqueous to borax solutions, and it was found that the weak intrinsic fluorescence of flavonols could be pervasively sensitized by borax. A natural flavonol, morin, was subsequently chosen as a representative probe to develop a turn-on fluorescence sensing method for borax analysis, which achieved a linear response spanning four orders of magnitude with a detection limit of 1...

BACKGROUND: Literature suggests that Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, Queer and Allied (LGBTQIA+) individuals encounter challenges with access and engagement with health services. Studies have reported that LGBTQIA+ individuals' experiences stigma, discrimination and health workers' micro aggression when accessing healthcare. There is compelling evidence to suggest that the LGBTQIA+ community are faced with disproportionate rates of HIV infection, mental health disorders, substance abuse and other non-communicable diseases...

OBJECTIVES: US veterans report more adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) than nonveterans, and a greater number of ACEs has been linked to substance use disorders (SUDs). To date, however, no study has examined whether specific ACEs may be linked to SUDs in this population in a sex-related fashion. METHODS: We analyzed data from the National Health and Resilience in Veterans Study, a nationally representative survey of 4069 US veterans. ACEs, current alcohol use disorder (AUD), and current drug use disorder (DUD) were assessed using validated self-report measures...

OBJECTIVES: The prevalence of street drug abuse is difficult to establish in women because of stigma associated with the practice. The main objective of this study was to analyze possible differences between men and women in a sample of patients attended for emergencies due to acute poisonings. The secondary aim was to identify variables associated with severe poisonings defined arbitrarily as requiring intensive care for more than 12 hours after hospital admission. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Retrospective study in 2 hospital EDs...