prescription drugs

Strategies to reduce the deathly toll of prescription drug abuse are reaping positive outcomes, though not every state is taking full advantage, according to a new report from Trust for America's Health. Released earlier this week, "Prescription Drug Abuse: Strategies to Stop the Epidemic" found that 28 states and Washington, D.C., scored six or less out of 10 possible indicators of "promising strategies" to address prescription drug abuse, which has contributed to a startling rise in overdose deaths. Since 1999, such deaths have doubled in 29 states, four of which experienced a quadrupling…
by Kim Krisberg This is the first in a series exploring the intersections between effectively caring for people living with chronic pain and the rise in unintentional poisoning deaths due to prescription painkillers. The series will explore the science and policy of balancing the need for treatment as well as the need to prevent abuse and diversion. This week's story provides a look at the field of pain medicine and the patients it cares for; next week's story will look at the educational and risk reduction approaches physicians are employing to address opioid addiction and overdose. It took…
PubMed is an on-line database at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) that contains information from scientific literature. Most of the information is related to medical research. To search PubMed, you use a program called Entrez. You go to the NCBI, select PubMed from the menu, type words into the text box, and start the search. Sometimes that's all you need to do. Sometimes you get several million results and need to use more specific words to limit the results the ones that you really want. Many scientists use PubMed on a daily basis. But the NCBI has noticed that…