BACKGROUND Polydrug abuse is a known problem among opioid-dependent patients receiving opioid maintenance treatment (OMT). However, improved laboratory diagnostics is required to reveal polydrug abuse in its current scope. Furthermore, there are few studies focusing on the relationship between polydrug abuse and adequacy of the dose of OMT medicine. This study aimed to evaluate the polydrug abu...

The use of DSM criteria to evaluate liability to substance use disorders (SUDs) and to identify SUD phenotypes may not provide the sensitivity required to identify genes associated with vulnerability to SUDs. The purpose of this study is to evaluate a number of basic aspects of substance use that may be more proximal than full SUDs to risk genes, some of which may thus have greater potential ut...

About 50% of people with schizophrenia also have a history of substance abuse or dependence, including alcoholism -a rate three times higher than average. This common combination of problems is sometimes called dual diagnosis. Alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine (in that order) are the substances most commonly involved. Schizophrenic patients who abuse substances are more likely to relapse into psy...

The pattern of substance abuse varies between different places and is ever-changing. Ecstasy and ketamine are two relative newcomers that have stayed and caused much harm. Emerging abuse of therapeutic substances should be identified in order to prevent its proliferation. Piperazines are a group of synthetic chemicals with psychoactive properties. They are popular party drugs elsewhere and were...

A central nervous system (CNS) site of action generally requires that, following entry into the systemic circulation, substances must interact with the blood-brain barrier (BBB) en route to brain tissue targets. Many substances with CNS activity, including drugs of abuse, cross the BBB by simple passive diffusion (Oldendorf 1974; Levin 1980; Cornford et al. 1982). Accordingly, the BBB plays an ...

This study explores outcome variation among women offenders who participated in gender-responsive substance abuse treatment (GRT). In order to identify subgroups of participants that may differentially benefit from this treatment, secondary analyses examined the interaction between randomization into GRT and a history of abuse (physical/sexual) on depression and number of substances used post- ...

BACKGROUND The substances abuse has become one of the major public health problems of present society. Recently there has been an increase in the incidence of substance abuse including that of opioids throughout the world. The proper assessment of the current trends and pattern of opioid abuse can be helpful in more effective intervention of this menace. MATERIALS AND METHODS To find out vari...