"Health News - Medicine, Diet and Fitness"

Young adults who have recently battled depression are at increased risk of starting to smoke cigarettes or initiating alcohol and other drug use, according to a report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Men’s health Services Administration (SAMHSA).

SAMHSA, drawing on data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Men’s health, said that youths ages 18 to 25 who reported a major depressive episode in the past year were 60 percent more likely than their peers to have started smoking, 35 percent more likely to have started drinking, twice as likely to have begun misusing prescription pain medication, and twice as likely to have started using illicit drugs.

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One Wonders Whether GSK Might Do A “Soft” Recall Of Its Embattled Diabetes Drug, As Was Done By BMS With Serzone And Tequin In Recent Years

(Posted by Tom Lamb at DrugInjuryWatch.com)

Avandia (rosiglitazone) is a prescription drug from GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) approved by the FDA in 1999 to treat Type 2 diabetes.

Heroin use is rising in Wisconsin, and increased drug purity is causing a spike in overdoses, but more addicts are being saved from death by use of the opiate antidote Narcan, the Capital Times reported Oct. 22.

Groups like the AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin have trained hundreds of addicts to self-administer the antidote in case of an accidental overdose, as well as training emergency-services personnel on how to use Narcan. In south-central Wisconsin alone, at least 86 overdose victims have been saved by Narcan — the trade name of the opiate agonist naloxone — during the past two years.

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Massachusetts Men’s health officials have established a tracking system to monitor prescription of psychiatric drugs to children after the overdose death of a four-year-old girl, the Boston Globe reported Oct. 7.

In the first three months of the program, 35 cases of suspected overprescription of drugs have been uncovered. The state Medicaid program is analyzing records of prescriptions to 82,900 children under age 5; flagged cases include those where kids are receiving three or more psychiatric drugs or one powerful antipsychotic.

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A multi-million-dollar class-action lawsuit has been filed by a group of counties in Kentucky over problems associated with the powerful prescription painkiller OxyContin, Pharmaceutical News reported Oct. 7.

The lawsuit alleges that OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma committed fraud and was guilty of conspiracy, negligence and creating a public nuisance in its marketing of the drug, which was at the heart of an epidemic of prescription-drug abuse and overdose deaths in Kentucky and elsewhere in the U.S.

The lawsuit seeks reimbursement of the cost of prescriptions paid by Medicaid and the Kentucky Pharmaceutical Alliance program, as well as damages associated with the addiction-treatment and law-enforcement costs associated with OxyContin use.

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Massachusetts has launched a statewide public awareness campaign to address and reduce the stigma associated with addiction.

The campaign promotes a new website, TalkAboutAddiction.org, which launched Sept. 1 to coincide with Recovery Month, according to Michael Botticelli, Director of the state’s Bureau of Substance Abuse Services in the Department of Public Men’s health.

The campaign focuses on five specific addictions: tobacco, alcohol, prescription drugs, illegal drugs and gambling.

“It is estimated that 8.7% of Massachusetts residents meet the criteria for substance abuse or dependence on alcohol, yet only one in ten will ever seek treatment,” said Botticelli. Many of these people cite the shame, embarrassment and stigma associated with addiction as a major reason for not getting help, he said.
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President Bush today signed a comprehensive Food and Drug Administration bill that focuses on prescription drug safety reforms.

A new addiction treatment center named for former Massachusetts first lady Kitty Dukakis will open at the Lemuel Shattuck Hospital in Jamaica Plain, Mass., the Boston Globe reported Sept. 30.

The wife of former governor and presidential candidate Mike Dukakis, Kitty went public with her personal story of addiction to alcohol and prescription drugs in 1990, as well as her experience with depression. She also founded the Friends of the Shattuck Shelter, now called hopeFound, a homeless shelter for men and women.

The Kitty Dukakis Treatment Center for Women has 32 beds and will serve post-detox patients in the early stages of recovery. The 28-day program will open in January and is expected to treat 300 women annually. Addiction, HIV, and post-traumatic stress counseling will be provided.

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A “substantially growing number of patients” are being injured or killed by the prescription drugs they are taking under doctors’ orders, according to a new report from the Institute for Safe Medication Practices.

Reuters reported Sept. 10 that researcher Thomas Moore and colleagues said that reports of such deaths and injuries have more than doubled between 1998 and 2005, largely due to problems with painkillers and immune-system boosters.

Drug-related deaths increased from 5,519 in 1998 to 15,107 in 2005. Overall reports rose from 34,966 to 89,842 during the same period — a rate four times greater than the growth in outpatient prescriptions.

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By Bob Curley

Fewer adolescents are telling federal researchers that they use marijuana, but the 2006 National Survey on Drug Use and Men’s health (NSDUH) reported that most indicators of alcohol, tobacco and other drug use remain relatively unchanged from 2005.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Men’s health Services Administration (SAMHSA) unveiled the survey results on Sept. 6, with federal officials touting a 25-percent reported decline in marijuana use among male youths between 2002 and 2006 but fretting over the 2.2 million new nonmedical users of prescription drugs, including narcotic painkillers. Most users of prescription drugs for recreational reasons reported getting the drugs free from friends or family members.

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