The aim of this study was to assess the presence of alcohol, illicit drugs and medicinal drugs among Spanish drivers involved in fatal road accidents between 1991 and 2000. Samples were obtained for 5745 drivers killed in road accidents from January 1991 to December 2000. Of the samples, 91.7% represented males and 8.3% females; 40.7% were under 30 years of age, 31.9% were under 31-50 years of ...

OBJECTIVE To describe drug use, sexual risks and the prevalence of blood-borne viral infections among men who inject image and performance enhancing drugs (IPEDs). DESIGN A voluntary unlinked-anonymous cross-sectional biobehavioural survey. SETTING 19 needle and syringe programmes across England and Wales. PARTICIPANTS 395 men who had injected IPEDs. RESULTS Of the participants (median ...

Background Off-label prescribing of psychoactive drugs is a common practice in psychiatry. Here, we sought to investigate the frequency of off-label prescribing in a population of hospitalized patients with a somatic illness who were also suffering from a psychiatric pathology. Methods Using a prospective, observational design, we collected data from 982 hospitalized patients with a somatic i...

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES To investigate (1) the prevalence of physical restraints and psychoactive medication, (2) newly administered physical restraints, frequency of application of the devices and frequency of psychoactive medication on demand during 12-month follow-up and (3) characteristics associated with restraint use in nursing homes. BACKGROUND High quality data on restraint use in German ...

BACKGROUND There has been significant media interest in the use of novel psychoactive substances (also known as 'legal highs') and reports in the medical literature of toxicity associated with their use. However, most surveys of recreational drug use focus on classical drugs such as cocaine and ecstasy, and there is limited information on how commonly emerging novel psychoactive substances are ...

Drugs that act on mental state, generally termed "psychoactive agents," are among the most widely used medications in medicine. Psychoactive agents can affect the cardiovascular system and must be used carefully to avoid negative cardiovascular consequences. In the present article we review the potential adverse cardiovascular consequences of psychoactive medications and provide suggestions for...

A commentary in Nature entitled "Towards responsible use of cognitive-enhancing drugs by the healthy" (Greely et al 2008 Nature 456: 702-705) offers an opportunity to move toward a humane societal appreciation of mind-altering drugs. Using cognitive enhancing drugs as an exemplar, this article presents a series of hypotheses concerning how an individual might learn optimal use. The essence of t...

Canadian data on prenatal exposure to alcohol, tobacco, psychoactive drugs, and caffeine are sparse. This study presents prevalence rates in Saskatoon for these four risk behaviours during the first trimester of pregnancy and their associations with sociodemographic factors. Personal interviews were conducted with 605 pregnant women (83% participation rate). The most commonly used substance was...

Substance abuse has been a thorny public health concern throughout human history. Manifestly, prevention and treatment are the two main strategies commonly adopted to tackle problem of substance abuse. They in fact cross-disciplinary, they relate various domains heredity, biology, psychology, cognitive science, family, social development cultural structures. Almost everyone, directly or indirec...

Treatment options for chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection have drastically changed since the development and licensing of new potent direct-acting antivirals (DAAs). The majority of DAAs are extensively metabolized by liver enzymes and have the ability to influence cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes. Additionally, these DAAs are both substrates and inhibitors of drug transporters, which makes ...