BACKGROUND Illicit drug abuse is an independent risk factor for chronic kidney disease, but the pathogenic consequences of long-term exposure to illicit drugs and contaminants under unsterile conditions remains unclear. STUDY DESIGN Case series. SETTING & PARTICIPANTS All deceased persons (n 5 129) who underwent forensic autopsy because of suspected connection with illicit drug abuse betwee...

Estimates of the total costs of substance abuse in the United States, including productivity and healthand crime-related costs, exceed $600 billion annually (approximately $181 billion for illicit drugs, $193 billion for tobacco, and $235 billion for alcohol). Twenty-five percent of all US deaths can be attributed to drug abuse. Alcohol, the most commonly used drug among American teenagers, kil...

Cannabis is the most widely used illicit drug throughout the developed world and there is consistent evidence of heritable influences on multiple stages of cannabis involvement including initiation of use and abuse/dependence. In this paper, we describe the methodology and preliminary results of a large-scale interview study of 3,824 young adult twins (born 1972-1979) and their siblings. Cannab...

OBJECTIVES The objective of this study was to examine the associations between (a) childhood maltreatment (i.e., physical abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect) and subsequent illicit drug use and (b) childhood maltreatment and drug-related problems in young adulthood. METHODS Wave 1 and Wave 3 public-use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health were used. Logistic regression...

This article applies methods of latent class analysis (LCA) to data on lifetime illicit drug use in order to determine whether qualitatively distinct classes of illicit drug users can be identified. Self-report data on lifetime illicit drug use (cannabis, stimulants, hallucinogens, sedatives, inhalants, cocaine, opioids and solvents) collected from a sample of 6265 Australian twins (average age...

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