Researchers Find a Link Between Trump Voters and Opioid Use
Stuart Ritchie/Getty Images Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. A study published on Friday by scientists at the University of Texas and the University of Toronto points to a connection between Trump country and the nation’s opioid crisis. The report, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, gathered data at…
A Grim New Reality: More Overdose Deaths Means More Available Organs
Ridofranz/Getty Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. The mounting death toll from the overdose epidemic has had an unforeseen effect: more organ donors. Between 2000 and 2016, the number of organ donors who died of drug overdoses grew 17-fold, according to a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine. In 2016,…
He Was Dying. Antibiotics Weren’t Working. Then Doctors Tried a Forgotten Treatment.
Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. Steffanie Strathdee hunched over her laptop, fretting. She barely noticed the kittens asleep next to her or the serene Buddha figure across the living room, anchored next to the glass doors that looked toward the gleaming Pacific. Her mind was 20 miles away in the…
With Each Pharma-Funded Meal, Doctors’ Opioid Prescriptions Rise
SARINYAPINNGAM/Getty Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. Amid a spiraling overdose epidemic, opioid prescribing is still on the rise for a small subset of physicians: those who receive funding from opioid manufacturers. That’s according to a research letter published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study combined two datasets:…
“I Was Directed to Market OxyContin”: A Purdue Pharma Rep Tells How He Was Paid to Push Opioids
Pureradiancephoto/Getty When Sean Thatcher was a sales rep at Purdue Pharma, which makes OxyContin, doctors he visited often complained that their patients were developing tolerance to the opioid painkiller. Thatcher, who worked for the company between 2009 and 2015 in Montana, was instructed to tell the prescribers to increase the dose, and to clarify that…
Are Bacteria a Secret Weapon Against Eczema? These Researchers Are Hopeful.
Getty Inflammation, itching, painful skin lesions: This is everyday life for patients with atopic dermatitis, a type of eczema that affects roughly 11 percent of adults and 7 percent of children in the United States and accounts for nearly $5.3 billion in annual health care costs. Topical steroids, usually hydrocortisone ointments, are often the first…