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In their paper published in  Psychiatry Research Neuroimaging , the team reports that reward system structures are larger in alcoholic women than in nonalcoholic women, and their report confirmed earlier studies that found the same structures were smaller in alcoholic men than in nonalcoholic men. The study, which enrolled currently abstinent individuals with a history of long-term alcohol use disorder, also found a negative association between the length of sobriety and the size of the fluid-filled ventricles in the center of the brain, suggesting possible recovery of the overall brain from the effects of alcoholism "Until now, little has been known about the volume of the reward regions in alcoholic women, since all previous studies have been done in men," says co-author Gordon Harris, PhD, of the 3D Imaging Service and the Center for Morphometric Analysis in the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at MGH. "Our findings suggest that it might be helpful to consid...

"This is a new application for an old pain medication that offers hope for reducing the development of acute pain in the first few days after surgery, as well as chronic postoperative pain and the need for opioid medications following discharge from the hospital," said Glenn S. Murphy, M.D., lead study author and physician anesthesiologist at NorthShore University Health System in Evanston, Illinois. "There is currently an opioid crisis in the United States, and intraoperative methadone offers promise as a drug that can reduce the need for these pain medications during recovery." Methadone is a unique long-acting opioid that is typically used to relieve severe pain in people who are in need of medication around the clock for extended periods of time, and in those who cannot be treated with other medications. It is also used to prevent withdrawal symptoms in patients addicted to opiate drugs, specifically heroin. "Appropriate pain control is essential for ...

The results suggest very high rates of serious illness and death among patients with OUD in general medical care settings -- much higher than for those in addiction specialty clinics, according to by Yih-Ing Hser, PhD, of University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues. They write, "The alarmingly high morbidity and mortality among OUD patients revealed in the present study challenge healthcare systems to find new and innovative ways to expand evidence-based strategies for OUD in a variety of settings." Late Diagnosis and High Rates of Medical Problems for OUD Patients in Healthcare Network Using electronic health records from their university healthcare system, the researchers identified 2,576 adults with OUD. The patients, average age 41 years at first OUD diagnosis, had high rates of physical and mental health conditions and other types of substance use disorder. At four years of follow-up, 465 of the patients had died -- a rate of 18.1 percent. Mortality in...

Recently, scientists have been studying compounds called metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), which are made of metal ions linked to organic ligands, for drug delivery. Active ingredients can be packed inside MOFs, which are porous, and some of them have additional traits such as water solubility that make them good candidates for drug couriers. But few studies have so far investigated whether such MOFs could be used in oral formulations. J. Fraser Stoddart and colleagues wanted to test promising MOFs using ibuprofen as a model drug. The researchers loaded therapeutically relevant concentrations of ibuprofen into easily prepared, biocompatible MOFs with cyclodextrin and alkali metal cations. Testing in mice showed that the compounds reached the blood stream quickly in about 10 to 20 minutes and lasted twice as long as ibuprofen salts, which are the active ingredient in commercial liquid gel formulations. The researchers say the promising findings suggest that these compounds could ta...