By Laura Sanders So many of us struggle to fall asleep and stay there through the night. About a third of U.S. adults aren’t sleeping enough. Teenagers’ sleep is even worse; 8 in 10 teens are sleep deprived. Our collective exhaustion isn’t good for us. Lack of sleep can come with a range of health problems. Our immune systems, hormones, hearts — maybe all the body’s major systems — are influenced by sleep. In the brain, our memory, creativity and ability to learn are, too. But for something that’s so entwined with our health, the actual jobs of sleep are still, in many ways, a mystery. Scientists have tons of ideas: Perhaps sleep is for rifling through memories, picking out the important ones. Or maybe it’s a quiet, still time for growing bones in children. Or maybe it’s a time to let the brain loose on whatever problem vexed you that day. (One delightfully myopic theory posits that sleep, especially the rapid eye movement stage, is for squeezing fluid around the eye to keep it lubricated.) Figuring out why we sleep has puzzled scientists for as long as the question has existed. It’s like following hundreds of disappearing breadcrumbs on paths through a forest of trees that keep shifting spots, only to realize you’re standing alone in only your underwear. Oh, and you forgot to study for the test. Given this hazy scientific landscape, it’s no surprise that efforts to help the sleep-deprived catch some z’s might fall short or have unintended consequences. That’s clear from a new study of the sleep medicine zolpidem. Zolpidem, sold as Ambien, messes with yet another possible job of sleep – housekeeping. © Society for Science & the Public 2000–2025

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 29663 - Posted: 02.08.2025

By Andrew Jacobs and Rachel Nuwer After more than three decades of planning and a $250 million investment, Lykos Therapeutics’ application for the first psychedelic drug to reach federal regulators was expected to be a shoo-in. Lykos, the corporate arm of a nonprofit dedicated to winning mainstream acceptance of psychedelics, had submitted data to the Food and Drug Administration showing that its groundbreaking treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder — MDMA plus talk therapy — was significantly more effective than existing treatments. At a pivotal public hearing last summer, two dozen scientists, doctors and trauma survivors told an F.D.A. advisory panel how MDMA-assisted therapy had brought marked relief from a mental health condition associated with high rates of suicide, especially among veterans. Then came skeptics with disturbing accusations: that Lykos was “a therapy cult,” that practitioners in its clinical trials had engaged in widespread abuse of participants and that the company had concealed a litany of adverse events. “The most significant harms in Lykos’s clinical trials were not caused by MDMA, but by the people who were entrusted to supervise its administration,” Neşe Devenot, one of the speakers opposed to Lykos’s treatment and a writing instructor at Johns Hopkins University, told the committee. Dr. Devenot and six others presented themselves as experts in the field of psychedelics, but none had expertise in medicine or therapy. Nor had the speakers disclosed their connection to Psymposia, a leftist advocacy group whose members oppose the commercialization of psychedelics and had been campaigning against Lykos and its nonprofit parent, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, or MAPS. The critics did not provide evidence to back their claims of systematic wrongdoing, but when the votes were counted that day, the panel overwhelmingly rejected Lykos’s application. Before voting, panelists cited a number of concerns, among them MDMA’s potential effects on the heart and liver, and whether trial results were influenced by the fact that most study participants correctly guessed they had received the drug and not a placebo. © 2025 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Depression
Link ID: 29659 - Posted: 02.05.2025

Damian Carrington Environment editor The exponential rise in microplastic pollution over the past 50 years may be reflected in increasing contamination in human brains, according to a new study. It found a rising trend in micro- and nanoplastics in brain tissue from dozens of postmortems carried out between 1997 and 2024. The researchers also found the tiny particles in liver and kidney samples. The human body is widely contaminated by microplastics. They have also been found in blood, semen, breast milk, placentas and bone marrow. The impact on human health is largely unknown, but they have been linked to strokes and heart attacks. The scientists also found that the concentration of microplastics was about six times higher in brain samples from people who had dementia. However, the damage dementia causes in the brain would be expected to increase concentrations, the researchers said, meaning no causal link should be assumed. “Given the exponentially rising environmental presence of micro- and nanoplastics, this data compels a much larger effort to understand whether they have a role in neurological disorders or other human health effects,” said the researchers, who were led by Prof Matthew Campen at the University of New Mexico in the US. Microplastics are broken down from plastic waste and have polluted the entire planet, from the summit of Mount Everest to the deepest oceans. People consume the tiny particles via food, water and by breathing them in. A study published on Thursday found tiny plastic pollution to be significantly higher in placentas from premature births. Another recent analysis found that microplastics can block blood vessels in the brains of mice, causing neurological damage, but noted that human capillaries are much larger. © 2025 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: Neurotoxins
Link ID: 29656 - Posted: 02.05.2025

By Gina Kolata The Food and Drug Administration approved a new medication Thursday to treat pain from an injury or surgery. It is expensive, with a list price of $15.50 per pill. But unlike opioid pain medicines, it cannot become addictive. That is because the drug, suzetrigine, made by Vertex Pharmaceuticals and to be sold as Journavx, works only on nerves outside the brain, blocking pain signals. It cannot get into the brain. Researchers say they expect it to be the first of a new generation of more powerful nonaddictive drugs to relieve pain. To test the drug, Vertex, which is based in Boston, conducted two large clinical trials, each with approximately 1,000 patients who had pain from surgery. They were randomly assigned to get a placebo; to get the opioid sold as Vicodin, a widely used combination pain medicine of acetaminophen (Tylenol) and hydrocodone; or to get suzetrigine. In one trial, patients had an abdominoplasty, or tummy tuck. In the other, they had a bunionectomy. Side effects of suzetrigine reported by patients were similar to the ones reported by those taking the placebo. The company also submitted data from a 250-person study that assessed the drug’s safety and tolerability in patients with pain from surgery, trauma or accidents. Suzetrigine eased pain as much as the combination opioid. Both were better than the placebo at relieving pain. Suzetrigine’s price, though, is much higher than that of acetaminophen plus hydrocodone. Patients are expected to take two pills a day, for a total cost of $31 a day. The older drug, said Dr. John D. Loeser, an emeritus pain expert at the University of Washington, is “dirt cheap” at pennies per pill. But suzetrigine does not have opioids’ unpleasant side effects like nausea and drowsiness, and it is nonaddictive. © 2025 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 29653 - Posted: 02.01.2025

By Katie J.M. BakerMegan TwoheyDanielle Ivory and Jeremy Singer-Vine At Stiiizy, the best-selling cannabis brand in America, the goal is explicit: producing powerful and cheap marijuana. Inside its Los Angeles headquarters, crews dust joints with concentrated THC, the intoxicating component of cannabis. They package pocket-size vape cartridges that promise “the highest potency possible.” On its website, the company declares that “it has never been easier (or quicker) to get silly high for an affordable price.” Dispensaries operating under the brand of another leading company, Cookies, have promoted “powerful medical benefits,” including “cancer fighting” qualities. A cannabis-infused chocolate bar was, until recently, described as containing properties “beneficial to those suffering” from glaucoma, bacterial infections and Huntington’s disease, a devastating genetic illness. More than a decade after states began legalizing recreational marijuana, businesses are enticing customers with unproven health claims, while largely escaping rigorous oversight. A New York Times review of 20 of the largest brands found that most were selling products with such claims, potentially violating federal and state regulations. And as companies compete, potency has gone up — with some products advertised as having as much as 99 percent THC — and prices have gone down. “What we’re seeing is really a race to the bottom,” said Matt Zehner, a senior analyst at Brightfield Group, which tracks the legal cannabis industry. Some executives said their companies are trying to navigate complex rules while satisfying their customers. Stiiizy’s co-founder and chief executive, James Kim, said in an interview that many are heavy users in search of a good deal, something he had sought as a broke “pothead” in his early 20s. “This is why I believe we’re very successful,” he said. But in a $32 billion industry that has been volatile — only about a quarter of businesses turned a profit last year, one survey found — companies say they also face pressure to do whatever they can to survive. © 2025 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 29647 - Posted: 01.29.2025

By Ellen Barry A study of more than 30,000 British adults diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or A.D.H.D., found that, on average, they were dying earlier than their counterparts in the general population — around seven years earlier for men, and around nine for women. The study, which was published Thursday in The British Journal of Psychiatry, is believed to be the first to use all-cause mortality data to estimate life expectancy in people with A.D.H.D. Previous studies have pointed to an array of risks associated with the condition, among them poverty, mental health disorders, smoking and substance abuse. The authors cautioned that A.D.H.D. is substantially underdiagnosed and that the people in their study — most of them diagnosed as young adults — might be among the more severely affected. Still, they described their findings as “extremely concerning,” highlighting unmet needs that “require urgent attention.” “It’s a big number, and it is worrying,” said Joshua Stott, a professor of aging and clinical psychology at University College London and an author of the study. “I see it as likely to be more about health inequality than anything else. But it’s quite a big health inequality.” The study did not identify causes of early death among people with A.D.H.D. but found that they were twice as likely as the general population to smoke or abuse alcohol and that they had far higher rates of autism, self-harming behaviors and personality disorders than the general population. In adulthood, Dr. Stott said, “they find it harder to manage impulses, and have more risky behaviors.” He said health care systems might need to adjust in order to better serve people with A.D.H.D., who may have sensory sensitivity or difficulty managing time or communicating with clinicians during brief appointments. He said he hoped treatments for substance abuse or depression could be adapted for patients with A.D.H.D. © 2025 The New York Times Company

Keyword: ADHD; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 29643 - Posted: 01.25.2025

By Aimee Cunningham If cigarettes contained very little of the chemical that keeps people smoking, it could help smokers move away from these deadly products. That’s the rationale behind a new rule proposed on January 15 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which seeks to limit the amount of the addictive chemical nicotine in cigarettes. The reduced-nicotine cigarettes would have less than 5 percent of the amount of nicotine that’s generally found in regular cigarettes. The rule would also cap the nicotine in certain other products in which the tobacco leaves are burned. The FDA rule is just one step toward reduced-nicotine cigarettes and other combusted tobacco products becoming the standard. This process would probably take many years, depending on the priorities of future administrations and whether the tobacco industry challenges the rule in court, as it has the FDA’s rule placing graphic warning labels on their products. The 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control gave the FDA the authority to require graphic warning labels and to reduce nicotine in tobacco products. The idea for a nicotine limit has been around for decades. And the evidence supporting drastically lowering the amount of nicotine in combusted tobacco products has grown during that time. Randomized controlled trials of reduced-nicotine cigarettes report that people using them end up smoking fewer cigarettes per day. That’s also the case for studies that focused on groups at higher risk for smoking, including people who are socioeconomically disadvantaged and people with mental health conditions. © Society for Science & the Public 2000–2025.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 29632 - Posted: 01.18.2025

Hannah Devlin Science correspondent A powerful psychedelic that is used in healing ceremonies by Indigenous groups in the Amazon is being trialled as a pioneering approach to reduce problematic alcohol consumption. Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) is the active ingredient in ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic brew that has been used for thousands of years by shamans in South America. Scientists based at University College London are testing whether a one-off dose of the drug could help hazardous drinkers who want to reduce their alcohol intake. Alcohol addiction is notoriously difficult to overcome and there are few effective therapies available. “The current treatments really don’t work for a large proportion of people. For alcohol addiction, 50% of people relapse within three months and around 60-70% within three years,” said Prof Ravi Das, who is co-leading the trial at University College London with Prof Jeremy Skipper. “Treatment itself hasn’t changed fundamentally in 70 years, so there’s a desperate need for new drugs and treatment approaches. To the extent that DMT might provide a more effective treatment approach, it is worth exploring.” In its pure form, DMT is one of the most powerful psychoactive substances found in nature. “The dose we chose reliably produces strong effects,” said Dr Greg Cooper, a research fellow at UCL, adding that this included total out-of-body experiences, fully immersive hallucinations and entering colourful geometric landscapes. © 2025 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 29631 - Posted: 01.18.2025

By Apoorva Mandavilli The snake struck 11-year-old Beatrice Ndanu Munyoki as she sat on a small stone, which lay atop a larger one, watching the family’s eight goats. She was idly running her fingers through the dirt when she saw a red head dart from between the stones and felt a sharp sting on her right index finger. Never a crier, she ran to her father, David Mutunga, who was building a fence. He cut the cloth belt on her dress into strips with a machete, tied her arm in three places and rushed her to a hospital 30 minutes away on a motorcycle taxi. As the day stretched on, her finger grew darker, but the hospital in Mwingi, a small town in Kenya, had no antidote for that kind of venom. Finally that evening in November 2023, she was taken by ambulance to another hospital and injected with antivenom. When the finger blistered, swelled and turned black despite a second dose the next day, “I understood that they will now remove that part,” Mr. Mutunga said with tears in his eyes. Beatrice’s finger was amputated. In Kenya, India, Brazil and dozens of other countries, snakes vie for the same land, water and sometimes food as people, with devastating consequences. Deforestation, human sprawl and climate change are exacerbating the problem. According to official estimates, about five million people are bitten by snakes each year. About 120,000 die, and some 400,000 lose limbs to amputation. The real toll is almost certainly much higher. Estimates are generally based on hospital records, but most snakebites occur in rural areas, far from dispensaries that stock antivenom and among people too poor to afford treatment. “We don’t actually know the burden of snakebite for most countries of the world,” said Nicholas Casewell, a snake researcher at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. © 2025 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Neurotoxins
Link ID: 29621 - Posted: 01.08.2025

Jon Hamilton A single dose of the anesthetic ketamine can provide weeks of relief from severe depression. One reason may be that the drug causes long-term changes to a brain circuit involved in "giving up," a team reports in the journal Neuron. The team found that in zebrafish, ketamine alters this circuit in a way that causes the fish to persevere in the face of adversity rather than becoming passive. This resilience appears linked to brain cells called astrocytes, which play a central role in the "giving up" circuit. "Something happens within those cells that changes their response" to adversity, says Misha Ahrens, an author of the study and a senior group leader at HHMI's Janelia Research Campus. "We don't know what that is yet." But if scientists can figure it out, they might be able to develop more effective versions of ketamine and other psychiatric drugs, Ahrens says. The research involved the larval zebrafish, which is smaller than a grain of rice and looks like a tadpole. "It's transparent, so you can basically see what's going on in the entire brain all at once," says Alex Chen of Harvard University, another member of the team. For the experiment, the fish had to be kept stationary so scientists could monitor its brain. "But we still want it to feel like it's swimming through a virtual world," Chen says. The team did this by projecting images indicating forward movement when the animal swished its tail. Then they switched to images showing no progress, no matter what the fish did. © 2025 npr

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 29617 - Posted: 01.08.2025

By Roni Caryn Rabin Alcohol is a leading preventable cause of cancer, and alcoholic beverages should carry a warning label as packs of cigarettes do, the U.S. surgeon general said on Friday. It is the latest salvo in a fierce debate about the risks and benefits of moderate drinking as the influential U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans are about to be updated. For decades, moderate drinking was said to help prevent heart attacks and strokes. That perception has been embedded in the dietary advice given to Americans. But growing research has linked drinking, sometimes even within the recommended limits, to various types of cancer. Labels currently affixed to bottles and cans of alcoholic beverages warn about drinking while pregnant or before driving and operating other machinery, and about general “health risks.” But alcohol directly contributes to 100,000 cancer cases and 20,000 related deaths each year, the surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, said. He called for updating the labels to include a heightened risk of breast cancer, colon cancer and at least five other malignancies now linked by scientific studies to alcohol consumption. “Many people out there assume that as long as they’re drinking at the limits or below the limits of current guidelines of one a day for women and two for men, that there is no risk to their health or well-being,” Dr. Murthy said in an interview. “The data does not bear that out for cancer risk.” Only Congress can mandate new warning labels of the sort Dr. Murthy recommended, and it’s not clear that the incoming administration would support the change. © 2025 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 29612 - Posted: 01.04.2025

By Dave Philipps A van full of U.S. Special Operations veterans crossed the border into Mexico on a sunny day in July to execute a mission that, even to them, sounded pretty far out. Listen to this article with reporter commentary Over a period of 48 hours, they planned to swallow a psychedelic extract from the bark of a West African shrub, fall into a void of dark hallucinations and then have their consciousness shattered by smoking the poison of a desert toad. The objective was to find what they had so far been unable to locate anywhere else: relief from post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury symptoms. “It does sound a little extreme, but I’ve tried everything else, and it didn’t work,” said a retired Army Green Beret named Jason, who, like others in the van, asked that his full name not be published because of the stigma associated with using psychedelics. A long combat career exposed to weapons blasts had left him struggling with depression and anger, a frayed memory and addled concentration. He was on the verge of divorce. Recently, he said, he had put a gun to his head. “I don’t know if this will work,” Jason said of psychedelic therapy. “But at this point, I have nothing to lose.” Psychedelic therapy trips like this are increasingly common among military veterans. For years, psychedelic clinics in Mexico were a little-known last-ditch treatment for people struggling with drug addiction. More recently, veterans have found that they also got lasting relief from mental health issues they had struggled with since combat. No one tracks how many veterans seek psychedelic treatment in Mexico. Clinic owners estimate they now treat a few thousand American veterans a year, and say the number is steadily growing. Many of the veterans have free access to the U.S. veterans’ health care system but find standard treatments for combat-related mental health issues to be ineffective. The Department of Veterans Affairs announced this month that, for the first time in more than 50 years, it would fund research into psychedelic therapy. But while the research is conducted, the treatments will remain inaccessible to most veterans, perhaps for years. © 2024 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stress; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 29608 - Posted: 12.21.2024

By Terence Monmaney The road switches back and forth again and again as it climbs into Montchavin, perched in the French Alps at 4,100 feet above sea level. The once-sleepy mountainside village, developed into a ski resort in the 1970s, is dotted with wooden chalet-style condo buildings and situated in the midst of a vast downhill complex known as Paradiski, one of the world’s largest. Well known to skiers and alpinistes, Montchavin also has grabbed the attention of medical researchers as the site of a highly unusual cluster of a devastating neurological disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. ALS, brought about by the progressive loss of nerve function in the brain, spinal cord and motor neurons in the limbs and chest, leading to paralysis and death, is both rare and rather evenly distributed across the globe: It afflicts two to three new people out of 100,000 per year. Though Montchavin is flooded with visitors in winter and summer, the year-round resident population is only a couple hundred, and neighboring villages aren’t much bigger, so the odds are strongly against finding more than just a few ALS patients in the immediate area. Yet physicians have reported 14. The first of the village patients to arouse suspicion in Emmeline Lagrange, the neurologist who has led the investigation into the problem, was a woman in her late thirties, a ski instructor and ski lift ticket-checker originally from Poland who worked in the offseason at the local tourism office. It was 2009. A physician in Montchavin had referred the woman to Lagrange, who practices at Grenoble University Hospital, 84 miles southwest of the village. Lagrange diagnosed ALS and recalls phoning the Montchavin physician to explain the consequences: “The first thing she said was, ‘I certainly know what it is. It’s the fourth case in the village. My neighbor died of ALS 20 years ago and two friends of hers are still victims of the disease.’”

Keyword: ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease ; Neurotoxins
Link ID: 29606 - Posted: 12.21.2024

7 Things Everyone Should Know About Antidepressants By Christina Caron Even if you’ve never taken an antidepressant, you’re probably familiar with the criticism and controversy that surrounds these drugs. It’s not uncommon to hear things like: “Those pills are just a placebo.” “You’ll definitely gain weight.” “Once you start, you’ll become dependent on them.” Is any of this true? Some of these statements have “a kernel of truth,” said Dr. Gerard Sanacora, a professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine. And it’s important to set the record straight because the expectations people have about their treatment — whether good or bad — “really do play a large role in how the treatment actually unfolds,” he added. Dr. Sanacora and other experts addressed some common questions and misconceptions about antidepressants. Will antidepressants change who I am? When an antidepressant starts to work, you may feel like a different person in some ways, said Naomi Torres-Mackie, a clinical psychologist in New York City. “Picture this giant, dark cloud weighing you down — as that lifts, the world is going to look different,” she said, adding: “But as you get used to it, you may see that it actually allows you to have more joy in your life.” On the other hand, up to half of people who take antidepressants may experience some degree of emotional blunting or numbed emotions, and research suggests that the blunting is more likely to happen with a higher medication dosage. When antidepressants are working correctly, patients should still feel a range of emotions, even if the sadness they used to feel every day is gone, said Dr. Laine Young-Walker, chair of the department of psychiatry at the University of Missouri School of Medicine. © 2024 The New York Times Compan

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 29593 - Posted: 12.11.2024

By Shane O’Neill In 2018, Matt Christensen kicked heroin by replacing drugs with drinking. When he stopped drinking in 2022, he turned to food. He put on 95 pounds. His doctor recommended he try Wegovy, part of a class of drugs known as GLP-1 receptor agonists, to help him lose weight. Eventually he switched to a different drug called Zepbound, which targets both GLP-1 and GIP agonists. The drugs worked. Get concise answers to your questions. Try Ask The Post AI. But a funny thing happened on his weight-loss journey: His cravings for food had diminished but so had his cravings for drugs and alcohol. Christensen, 42, started drinking at age 9 and using heroin at 17. For decades, catching a cold meant reaching for a hot toddy. Work stress meant numbing out with Xanax. Even passing through certain neighborhoods in Chicago where he used to buy drugs would lead to cravings. But after he started taking GLP-1 agonists, those triggers became, well, less triggering. “It was the weirdest thing,” he said. “It was just quiet. I just found it really easy all of a sudden.” More than that, Christensen noticed that an unease he had always felt in his body — a discomfort he perpetually tried to quell with fidgeting, food or drugs — was diminishing. “That’s a feeling that I’ve had my entire life,” he said. “Taking these drugs has toned that down. “There’s no silver bullet for addiction or mental illness, but for me, in concert with the other treatments, it has been an absolute game changer,” he said. Matt Christensen says weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Zepbound have been “an absolute game changer” when it comes to his addiction struggles.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Obesity
Link ID: 29589 - Posted: 12.07.2024

By Christina Caron The holidays offer an excuse to gather with loved ones, let loose and indulge: Plates loaded with comfort foods. Unapologetic napping. All the pie. And, for some, plenty of alcohol. But heavy drinking is not limited to the holiday season. Nor is it mainly the pastime of college students. Overall binge drinking rates are now equivalent among young adults and those in midlife. That’s because young people, especially young men, are bingeing less — while middle-aged adults are throwing back more alcohol in a single session than they previously did. We’ve long been warned about the risks of binge drinking, usually defined as having four or five drinks in a two-hour span. And now researchers are increasingly focused on a more dangerous pattern of alcohol use that they call high-intensity drinking: consuming eight or more drinks in a row for women and 10 or more drinks in a row for men. High-intensity drinking is even riskier than binge drinking, and it’s on the rise among certain segments of the population. How does high-intensity drinking differ from binge drinking? The definition of binge drinking stems from the work of Henry Wechsler, a social psychologist at Harvard University who in 1993 tracked alcohol use among college students across the country. He found that young women who reported consuming at least four drinks in a night and men who consumed at least five experienced the most drinking-related problems. But other researchers noticed that some of the worst consequences associated with binge drinking, such as blackouts and alcohol poisoning, tended to happen when people had much more than four or five drinks. Over the years, experts have referred to heavier levels of binge drinking in different ways, including “extreme drinking” and the far less catchy “extreme ritualistic alcohol consumption.” In recent years they settled on “high-intensity drinking.” © 2024 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 29582 - Posted: 11.30.2024

By Roni Caryn Rabin The number of deaths caused by alcohol-related diseases more than doubled among Americans between 1999 and 2020, according to new research. Alcohol was involved in nearly 50,000 deaths among adults ages 25 to 85 in 2020, up from just under 20,000 in 1999. The increases were in all age groups. The biggest spike was observed among adults ages 25 to 34, whose fatality rate increased nearly fourfold between 1999 and 2020. Women are still far less likely than men to die of an illness caused by alcohol, but they also experienced a steep surge, with rates rising 2.5-fold over 20 years. The new study, published in The American Journal of Medicine, drew on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Deaths related to alcohol included those caused by certain forms of heart disease, liver disease, nerve damage, muscle damage, pancreatitis and alcohol poisoning, as well as related mental and behavioral disorders. The study did not include other deaths influenced by alcohol, such as accidents. “The totality of the evidence indicates that people who consume moderate to large amounts of alcohol have a markedly increased incidence of premature deaths and disability,” said Dr. Charles Hennekens, a professor of medicine at Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine at Florida Atlantic University and one of the study’s authors. The increase at the onset of the pandemic appears to have persisted. Adults reported more heavy drinking and binge drinking in 2022, another recent study found. Some 48,870 alcohol-related deaths were reported in 2020, up from 19,356 in 1999, the new study found. The mortality rate rose to 21.6 deaths per 100,000 in 2020, an increase from 10.7 deaths per 100,000 in 1999. © 2024 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 29570 - Posted: 11.23.2024

By Kim Tingley There are two opposite paths to achievement in science. The first is straightforward: Identify a problem and set about solving it. The second is rather unscientific-sounding and perhaps more faith-based: Study in obscurity and hope serendipity strikes. In 1980, a young gastroenterologist named Jean-Pierre Raufman wound up taking the latter road through the digestive-diseases branch of the National Institutes of Health. His goal there was to gain research experience. While doing so, he chanced to meet the lead chemist of another laboratory, John Pisano, who had a passion for seeking out new and interesting examples of a specific kind of hormone, called a peptide, in animal venoms. Pisano regularly appealed to local insect and reptile enthusiasts in the classified pages of The Washington Post; in response, they would show up at his office door carrying plastic bags wriggling with possibility. Pisano offered some venom samples to Raufman for his meandering analyses. Over the following month, Raufman experimented with them to see if they stimulated pancreatic cells harvested from guinea pigs. The venom with the biggest effect by far came from a desert reptile that Raufman had never heard of: the Gila monster. Gila monsters — sluggish, thick-tailed ground dwellers — are native to southern Arizona and northern Mexico. They have blunt noses and bumpy black skin with tan, pink or orange squiggles. They spend 95 percent of their lives underground. Like their cousins to the south, Mexican beaded lizards, they are one of the very few lizard species that produces venom, which they excrete from mouth glands into grooves in their serrated teeth. The strength of their jaws is typically enough to subdue their prey (chicks, frogs, worms and the like). But if threatened and unable to escape or hide, they may bite a predator. Whenever they clamp down, piercing the skin, venom enters the victim’s bloodstream. This causes intense pain and can initiate a cascade of other symptoms that, in people, includes vomiting, dizziness, rapid heart rate, low blood pressure and, in rare circumstances, death. © 2024 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Neurotoxins; Obesity
Link ID: 29555 - Posted: 11.13.2024

Denis Campbell Health policy editor Hundreds of thousands of smokers will be given a pill that increases people’s chances of quitting, in a move that NHS bosses believe will save thousands of lives. About 85,000 people a year in England will be offered the chance to use varenicline, a once-a-day tablet that experts say is as effective as vapes at helping people to kick the habit. Amanda Pritchard, the chief executive of NHS England, hailed the pill as a potential “gamechanger” in the fight to tackle smoking and the huge harm to health it causes. The drug helps people to quit by reducing their cravings for nicotine and ensuring that it cannot affect the brain in its usual way. It has also been found to reduce the side-effects smokers can experience when they stop using tobacco, such as trouble sleeping and irritability. The NHS in England will give varenicline as part of its efforts to keep driving down the number of people who smoke. A decline in smoking rates over the past 20 years means that only 11.6% of adults in England still have the habit – about 6 million people. Health service bosses hope its use will lead to 9,500 fewer smoking-related deaths over the next five years. The drug – known at the time as Champix – began being used in 2006 and was taken by about 85,800 people a year until July 2021. It then became unavailable after the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), which regulates drugs, found impurities in it. That problem has now been addressed to the MHRA’s satisfaction and it has recently approved a generic version of the drug, which NHS England will use. It cited research by University College London that found it would save £1.65 in healthcare costs for every £1 it spent on the pill. © 2024 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 29554 - Posted: 11.13.2024

By Elle Hunt The first time Nick (not his real name) tried ketamine, he felt as if he’d entered another dimension. Though he smoked marijuana regularly and had experimented with other drugs, Nick had never even heard of ketamine. But when his friend pulled out a bag of white powder, “I did what anybody else would do at 20 years old. I tried it,” he says. “And I found it really fun, to be honest.” The floaty feeling, like he’d been lifted out of his own body, was “euphoric”, he says. “Like you’re in a fairy world.” Sixteen years later, reality is biting hard. Nick, now 36, has spent the past three months in recovery for ketamine addiction after more than a decade of heavy use. His bladder is a fifth of the size it should be, he says. It’s “more than likely” that it will have to be removed and replaced with a urostomy bag. That’s setting aside all the other “brutal things” he’s gone through as a consequence of ketamine addiction – from being bed-bound by pain to embarrassing bladder failures. Now six months clean, Nick still cannot last half an hour without needing to use the toilet. “I am now a disabled person, having been such a fit lad,” he says. Nick is sharing his story to warn others of the dangers of ketamine, which is rapidly emerging as gen Z’s recreational drug of choice. Widely used in human and veterinary medicine as an anaesthetic, in illicit use the class B substance is typically snorted for its dissociative effects. According to the most recent government figures, use in England and Wales has more than doubled since 2016; among 16- to 24-year-olds, it has more than tripled, and there are stories of addicts as young as 12 or 13. The story is similar elsewhere. In Australia, recreational use of ketamine was reported to have reached a record high last year. In the US, seizures of illicit ketamine grew by 349% between 2017 and 2022. The death of Friends actor Matthew Perry at the age of 54 from “acute effects” of ketamine raised awareness of the risks of addiction. © 2024 Guardian News & Media Limited o

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 29543 - Posted: 11.06.2024