Drug Overdose

HHS has released new guidance that the agency said will improve access to medication-assisted treatment for opioid use disorder.

Nonfatal drug-related overdoses are rising among children aged younger than 15 years, findings published in Pediatrics showed.

There were 81,230 drug overdose deaths in the United States in a 12-month period that ended in May — the highest number of overdose deaths ever registered in a similar time frame, according to the CDC.

A new virtual reality training program could help educate the public on how to respond to an opioid overdose, including how to properly use naloxone, according to research published Drug and Alcohol Dependence.

A postmortem review of 771 deaths initially attributed to cardiac arrest in San Francisco showed that more than one in six were actually the result of a prescription or nonprescription overdose.

Just 16.6% of commercially insured patients receive follow-up care after being released from the ED for a nonfatal opioid overdose, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open.

Patients admitted to EDs for nonfatal opioid or sedative/hypnotic drug overdose had “exceptionally high” risks for death due to suicide, unintentional overdose and other causes, according to results of a retrospective cohort study published in American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

The year and generation that someone is born could impact their risk for overdose death, according to a recent study published in Nature Medicine.

Opioid-involved overdose deaths commonly featured alcohol and benzodiazepine co-involvement, according to results of a repeated cross-section analysis published in JAMA Network Open.

Patients at risk for suicide should be prevented from accessing drugs with high case fatality rates, according to results of a cross-sectional study published in JAMA Network Open.