Background. The new psychoactive drugs (NPD) are those that represent a danger to public health and are not prohibited by conventions on international narcotics. The concept also includes new contexts and new routes of consumption as well as novel ways of distribution, notably Internet. The risks associated with NPD consumption are largely unknown to users and to health care providers. Objectiv...

The level oftotal Ach in the brain has been shown to vary with the functional activity of the central nervous system. Such variation has been related to physiological changes in nervousactivity. such as sleep or wakefulness. which causes increase in Ach content in the brain tissue (1). Neuropharmacological agents also changed the Ach content (2.3.4.5). .• , Thepurpose of the present study was t...

A major hindrance for the development of psychiatric drugs is the prediction of how treatments can alter complex behaviors in assays which have good throughput and physiological complexity. Here we report the development of a medium-throughput screen for drugs which alter anxiety-like behavior in adult zebrafish. The observed phenotypes were clustered according to shared behavioral effects. Thi...

Recently a new class of "designer drugs" has emerged on the drugs abuse market, known as "legal highs". Such drugs are legal to use and possess, and legal to supply. Mephedrone, a central nervous system stimulant, is the most widely experienced "legal high". This review presents any available information about psychoactive properties, safety profile, clinical data, and legislation of the new "l...

THC-positive cases (no other drugs or alcohol detected) showed an elevated relative risk compared to drug free drivers suggesting increased crash risk with recent cannabis use. When alcohol or other psychoactive drugs were also present this crash risk increased substantially. Recent use of cannabis therefore appears to be associated with an increased risk of a fatal car crash similar to a BAC o...

ii Psychoactive prescription drug use disorders, misuse and abuse iii All the passionate work I put into this thesis is dedicated to my parents, who always emphasized the importance of knowledge and of caring for the less fortunate. Background: There is a widespread and increasing use of psychoactive prescription drugs, such as opioid analgesics, anxiolytics, hypnotics and anti-epileptics, but ...

Patients can use numerous drugs that exist outside of existing regulatory statutes in order to get "legal highs." Legal psychoactive substances represent a challenge to the emergency medicine physician due to the sheer number of available agents, their multiple toxidromes and presentations, their escaping traditional methods of analysis, and the reluctance of patients to divulge their use of th...

Online availability and diffusion of New Psychoactive Substances (NPS) represents an emerging threat to healthcare systems. In this work, we analyse drugs forums, online shops, and Twitter. By mining the data from these sources, it is possible to understand the dynamics of drug diffusion and its endorsement, as well as timely detect new substances. We propose a set of visual analytics tools to ...

Our author writes that recent data from the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime indicate that 540 different drugs classified as new psychoactive substances (NPS) have been identified worldwide as of 2014, and this number is expected to rise. His article describes the complexity of the NPS problem, what is known about the molecular mechanisms of action, and the pharmacological effects of NP...

OBJECTIVE To review the assessment and recommended management of mild to moderate chronic pain in the older adult. DATA SOURCES Medline search using the terms pain, older adult, and analgesics, current national guidelines, and authors' case experiences. DATA SYNTHESIS Assessing pain in cognitively intact and impaired older adults is essential to safe use of psychoactive medications. Followi...