BACKGROUND Substance use among young people is a major public health problem in Iran. OBJECTIVES The aims of the present study were to determine the prevalence of substance misuse and its determinants in medical sciences students in Tehran, Iran. PATIENTS AND METHODS A cross-sectional study was performed on a randomly selected sample of 1992 medical sciences students during 2012-2013. Anony...

BACKGROUND Prescription drug abuse is a critical problem in the USA and has been linked to more deaths than automobile accidents. Despite this growing epidemic, the USA lacks a timely early warning system. Poison centers (PCs) have the potential to act as sentinel reporting entities for prescription drug abuse and misuse due to near-real-time data reporting and abundant coverage in the USA. M...

Background. Prescription opioids are the most frequently misused class of prescription drug among young adults aged 18-25, yet trajectories of opioid misuse and escalation are understudied. We sought to model opioid misuse patterns and relationships between opioid misuse, sociodemographic factors, and other substance uses. Methods. Participants were 575 young adults age 16-25 who had misused op...

BACKGROUND This is a supplemental report on tests of the long-term effects of universal preventive interventions conducted during middle school on 17-21-year-olds' prescription drug misuse. DESIGN/SETTING/PARTICIPANTS Two randomized controlled prevention trials were conducted in public schools in the rural midwestern United States. Study 1 began in 1993, with 667 6th-graders; follow-ups with ...

BACKGROUND Multiple studies have documented the incidence of illicit drug use and abuse of opioids. Over the years, several hypotheses have been proposed. Short-acting opioids such as hydrocodone are generally considered to predispose patients to poor pain management, dependency, misuse, or abuse; whereas long-acting opioids such as methadone are thought to provide sustained pain management wit...

BACKGROUND Urine drug testing has become a widely used tool in American society for deterring illicit drug use. In the practice of medicine, urine drug testing is commonly used to help diagnose substance misuse, abuse, or addiction. OBJECTIVE This narrative review provides an informed perspective on the importance of urine drug testing in the medical treatment of chronic noncancer pain. The h...

I n the past 2 decades, preventable injuries in children and adolescents have been on the decline. This decrease in injuries is a positive outcome of many years of injury prevention activities; however, one area in which injury rates are on the rise is drug poisoning. In fact, the number of poisoning incidences in youth aged 15 to 19 years doubled between 2000 and 2009. This sharp increase in p...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Legitimate opioid use is associated with an increased risk of long-term opioid use and possibly misuse in adults. The objective of this study was to estimate the risk of future opioid misuse among adolescents who have not yet graduated from high school. METHODS Prospective, panel data come from the Monitoring the Future study. The analysis uses a nationally representa...

One quarter of the prescription drugs sold in the United States are used by the elderly, often for problems such as chronic pain, insomnia, and anxiety. The prevalence of abuse may be as high as 11 percent with female gender, social isolation, depression, and history of substance abuse increasing risk. Screening instruments for prescription drug abuse have not been validated in the geriatric po...