Healio (11/2, Miller) reports, “A ‘revolution’ in legal access to cannabis over the past 20 years has raised concerns about its overuse,” investigators concluded in a clinical care article published online Nov. 3 in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Article author Robin Williams, MD, MBE, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, discussed the article’s contents with Healio Primary Care. Dr. Williams talked about “important takeaways” focusing “on the effects of cannabis use, intoxication and withdrawal, as well as the causes of cannabis use disorder and evidence-based pharmacologic and psychosocial treatments.”

Related Links:

— “Cannabis ‘revolution’ requires closer look at its benefits, dangers “Janel Miller, Healio, October 2, 2020

Healio (11/2, Michael) reports, “High school students with nonmedical opioid misuse may have an increased risk for heroin use later in life,” researchers concluded after conducting “a prospective study using a nationally representative sample of adolescents from 25 cohorts of 12th-graders who participated in the Monitoring the Future study and completed self-administered questionnaires from 1976 to 2000.” The 11,012 “participants were followed from 1993 through 2017, or from the ages of 18 years to 35 years.” The findings were published online Sept. 24 in a brief report in the Journal of Addiction Medicine.

Related Links:

— “Opioid misuse in high school linked to heroin use in adulthood “Erin Michael, Healio, October 2, 2020

Healio (11/2, Gramigna) reports, “Male and female youth with bipolar disorder had similar outcomes, despite substantial literature on sex differences among adults with bipolar disorder,” investigators concluded in a study that sought “to pinpoint potential sex differences in psychiatric comorbidity and mood symptomatology among 199 female and 171 male youth with bipolar 1 disorder, bipolar 2 disorder or operationalized bipolar disorder not otherwise specified according to DSM-4 criteria.” The findings were published online in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

Related Links:

— “Sex differences not significant for youth bipolar disorder outcomes “Joe Gramigna, Healio, October 2, 2020

MedPage Today (10/30, Dotinga) reported that in a presentation given at the virtual American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) annual meeting, “a team of emergency physicians urged colleagues to cast off their hesitation and start initiating treatment with the opioid withdrawal drug buprenorphine in the emergency department [ED].”

Related Links:

— MedPage Today (requires login and subscription)

Healio (10/30, Ernst) reported researchers found “SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins triggered a proinflammatory response in brain endothelial cells that may influence a change in the function of the blood-brain barrier.” The findings were published in Neurobiology of Disease.

Related Links:

— “Spike proteins provide ‘plausible explanation’ for neurological complications of COVID-19 “Julia Ernst, MS, Healio, October 30, 2020