Federal Research Effort into Opioids Seeks to Understand Mechanism of Drug Interaction, Treatment
Researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health are working now to understand how opioid drugs affect the brains of users, and which treatments might be most effective.
Dr. Wilson Compton, deputy director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, gave journalists at a National Press Foundation training session an overview of federal research funding efforts.
His institute has several resources for reporters, including Compton’s own research:
- A recent study of Compton’s in The New England Journal of Medicine on the relationship between nonmedical prescription opioid use and heroin use.
- A second study of Compton’s from the Journal of The American Medical Association tracking the nonmedical use of prescription opioids and how that changed over 10 years, from 2003 to 2013.
- The overall funding priorities for the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and how that has changed over time.
- Data that show drug-related emergency room visits, information that comes from the Drug Abuse Warning Network.
- Data on overall national trends of drug use, information that comes from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.
- Fact sheets on various drugs, including heroin and prescription drugs including opioids.
This program is funded by American Society of Addiction Medicine. NPF is solely responsible for the content.
