View clinical trials related to Opioid Abuse, Unspecified.
Filter by:The opioid epidemic has had a tremendous negative impact on the health of persons in the U.S. The objective of the trial 1 of Application of Economics & Social psychology to improve Opioid Prescribing Safety (AESOPS-T1), is to discourage unnecessary opioid prescribing through the application of "behavioral insights"-empirically-tested social and psychological interventions that affect choice.
The consequences of prescription opioid abuse are serious and the number of deaths from unintended overdose have quadrupled over the last 15+ years. Opioid analgesics remain among the most commonly abused class of substances in the United States. Moreover, patients who take pain medications for legitimate reasons may develop an opioid use disorder (OUD), with as many as 1 in 4 patients becoming dependent on their pain medications. Because of changing access to prescription opioid analgesics due to an increasingly negative prescribing climate and changes in guidelines, patients often turn to heroin, with an estimated 1 in 15 pain patients trying heroin within 10 years. Pain is a symptom that can be severely debilitating and needs to be treated adequately to improve the quality of life. Clinicians, then, are in a proverbial "catch-22" situation whereby treating a patient's chronic pain also exposes them to medications with substantial abuse liability and overdose risk. In this proposal, a method aimed at reducing the abuse potential of prescription opioid medications, without altering their analgesic efficacy, is described. The study team hypothesize that this can be accomplished by administering a fixed-dose-combination of an opioid with an atypical antipsychotic drug, in the same pill or capsule.
The opioid epidemic in the United States has become a clear health and safety concern for our children and families. Opioids given to our patients for the treatment of pain that go unused after the immediate post operative period pose a major hazard when left in the home unattended. Opioids can be accidentally ingested by small children or deliberately ingested by pre-teens and adolescents leading to major morbidity and or death. Additionally, studies have shown that many people addicted to opioids/narcotics have become so due to ingestion of medically prescribed drugs. Finally, there has been an increase number of home robberies specifically with the intent to steal prescription drugs. Removal of unused medication from the home is an important public safety concern to protect our patients, families and friends. The Sharps Co (R), offers a product called Takeaway Medication Recovery System. This product allows individuals to put unused opioids in a pre-paid envelope which is returned to the company through the postal system and properly incinerated. This provides safe disposal in accordance with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to protect the water table from contamination by drugs disposed of my other means. This system through the Sharps Co would allow for de-identified tracking of returned drugs.