By Agnel Philip Opioid use by American men may account for one-fifth of the decline in their participation in the U.S. labor force, according to a study by Princeton University economist Alan Krueger. “The opioid crisis and depressed labor-force participation are now intertwined in many parts of the U.S.,” Krueger, who was chief economist at [...]

By Matt Wynn, Staff Writer, MedPage Today August 23, 2017 Turns out, even a close call with an overdose isn't enough to deter opioid users. As described in a JAMA research letter, Julie M. Donohue, PhD, of the University of Pittsburgh, and colleagues looked at five years of claims data for Medicaid-covered patients in Pennsylvania. They examined records of opioid [...]

by Kaiser Health News Nothing seemed to help the patient — and hospice staff didn’t know why. They sent home more painkillers for weeks. But the elderly woman, who had severe dementia and incurable breast cancer, kept calling out in pain. The answer came when the woman’s daughter, who was taking care of her at home, [...]

By Suneel Kamath, MD August 21, 2017 Most doctors would say they went into medicine to help people by making them feel better or live longer. Sometimes helping people means refusing to do what they want. One of the many challenges of opioid addiction is the need to deny patients the painkillers they so desperately crave in [...]

By Erin McHenry For years, family gatherings had become contentious for Harold Tu, D.M.D., M.D., director of the Division of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at the University of Minnesota School of Dentistry.  Somehow, conversations always drifted to opioids. Tu, a longtime prescriber of opioids, would argue with his son-in-law about the safety and effectiveness of these pain medications. [...]

By Dennis Thompson TUESDAY, Aug. 8, 2017 (HealthDay News) -- Drug overdose deaths continue to climb in the United States, despite efforts to combat the nation's ongoing opioid addiction crisis, a new federal report states. The drug overdose death rate reached 19.9 cases for every 100,000 people during the late summer of 2016, compared with 16.7 [...]

By Christopher Ingraham President Trump on Thursday said he considers the opioid crisis to be “a national emergency,” starting a process aimed at giving the federal and state governments more resources and flexibility to deal with the epidemic. “The opioid crisis is an emergency, and I'm saying officially right now it is an emergency,” Trump told reporters at his golf [...]

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter April 25, 2017 America's prescription drug abuse epidemic may be even more deadly than expected, a new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests. Some opioid-related deaths may be missed when people die from pneumonia and other infectious diseases spurred on by drug abuse. Their death [...]

By Martha Bebinger WBUR April 11, 2017 There's a clear culprit in the rising drug overdose death count in Massachusetts -- the synthetic opioid fentanyl. More powerful and more deadly than heroin, fentanyl has sparked a new set of survival rules among people who abuse opioids. About 75 percent of the state's men and women who [...]