OBJECTIVES Most US studies of national trends in medical and nonmedical use of prescription opioids have focused on adults. Given the limited understanding in these trends among adolescents, we examine national trends in the medical and nonmedical use of prescription opioids among high school seniors between 1976 and 2015. METHODS The data used for the study come from the Monitoring the Futur...

CONTEXT The dramatic rise in the use of prescription opioids to treat non-cancer pain has been paralleled by increasing prescription opioid abuse. However, detailed analyses of these trends and programs to address them are lacking. OBJECTIVE To study the association between state shipments of prescription opioids for medical use and prescription opioid abuse admissions and to assess the effec...

tin in 84 patients with multiple myeloma (MM) and in 13 healthy controls. The level of measured antiangiogenic agent was correlated with the phase and stage of the disease, and most importantly with clinical and laboratory parameters depicting the disease activity (haemoglobin, creatinine, albumins, calcium, M-component, C-reactive protein, b2-microglobulin, lactate dehydrogenase, stage of bone...

Background Measures taken over the past four years in Greece to reduce pharmaceutical expenditure have led to significant price reductions for medicines, but have also changed patient cost-sharing rates for prescription drugs. This study attempts to capture the resulting increase in patients’ out-of-pocket (OOP) expenses for prescription drugs during the 2011-2014 period.   Methods The authors ...

This commentary discusses pertinent issues from Hyosun Kim’s paper on online prescription drug promotion. The study is well-designed and the findings highlight some of the consequences of the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) decision to deregulate online advertising of prescription drugs. While Kim’s findings confirm some of the early concerns, they also provide a perspective of implement...

Traditionally, medical prescriptions by doctors have been typically handwritten or printed by computer on paper and hand-delivered to pharmacists. Paperbased medical prescription is, however, causing increasing concern as incidences of prescription errors have been increasing causing minor to serious problems to patients, including deaths. Most of the errors of paper-based prescription could be...

The determinants of realized, perceived, and potential access to prescription drugs among an elderly population were studied. Data were derived from telephone interviews of 3498 noninstitutionalized elderly persons living in west Texas. Access indicators examined were whether the respondents were taking prescription drugs, had perceived problems in obtaining prescription drugs, had comprehensiv...