Painkiller overdoses soar
Opioid prescription painkillers cause more drug overdose deaths in the United States than cocaine or heroin, a new U.S. study finds.
Opioid painkillers include oxycodone, hydrocodone, methadone, morphine and fentanyl. U.S. sales of these painkillers have increased during the last 15 years, paralleling an increase in the number of deaths from the drugs, say researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In 2002, drug overdoses killed more than 16,000 people in the United States. Between 1999 and 2002, opioids surpassed both cocaine and heroin as a cause of overdoses.
The study, published in last week’s issue of Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety, found that total unintentional overdose deaths increased 5.3 percent each year from 1979 through 1990 and by 18.1 percent per year from 1990 through 2002.
From 1999 through 2002, overdose deaths linked to opioids increased by 91.2 percent, the researchers said, compared with 22.8 percent for cocaine and 12.4 percent for heroin.
Opioid abuse is most common among recreational and street drug users and people with psychiatric conditions, rather than pain patients, according to researchers.
Nicotine opens doors for cancer
Although the nicotine in tobacco and in nicotine-replacement patches and gums doesn’t cause lung cancer, it may help it along, a new study finds.
“Nicotine can promote the growth of new blood vessels and new cells–two things that are correlated with the progression of cancer–and our study shows how this actually happens,” said study co-author Srikumar P. Chellappan, an associate professor in the Drug Discovery Program with the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute at the University of South Florida in Tampa.
The finding raises questions about the use by lung cancer patients of nicotine-containing interventions aimed at helping smokers quit, such as popular patches and gums.
In previous work, Chellappan found that nicotine exposure among lung cancer patients did appear to undermine chemotherapy’s effectiveness in killing off cancer cells. Because so many patients use nicotine patches or gums to help them quit, this raises the troubling notion that these interventions might actually help encourage the disease.
Impotence a cardiac alarm
Impotence is more prevalent among men who have more severe coronary-artery disease than among men with low levels of the disease.
And because impotence, or erectile dysfunction, manifests itself two to three years sooner than coronary-artery disease, the condition essentially serves as an early warning system for cardiac trouble, a new Italian study found.
“It’s an important message to get out,” said Dr. Ira Sharlip, a spokesman for the American Urological Association. “There’s an increasing body of knowledge that tells us that erectile dysfunction is a form of cardiovascular disease and often predates the onset of other forms of clinical cardiovascular disease, specifically coronary disease.”
Erectile dysfunction affects, to some degree, 52 percent of men ages 40 through 70 in the United States and 322 million men worldwide. The condition is linked with age, risk factors for atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) and heart disease.
