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What do we really know about the relationship between the experience of pain and risk of developing opioid use disorder? Results from a recent study – the first to directly address this question—show that people with moderate or more severe pain had a 41 percent higher risk of developing prescription opioid use disorders than those without, independent of other demographic and clinical factors.
A few years ago Dr. Diana Martinez and Dr. Marco Diana decided to investigate a new technology that uses magnetic pulses to stimulate brain cells. Both had been trying to develop medications to treat cocaine addiction, and both had come to feel that the pace of progress—their own and others’—was unequal to the urgency of the need. In the new technology, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), they saw a potential treatment that might be developed relatively rapidly for clinical use.
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) given in combination with standard cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) improves smoking abstinence rates in the short term compared with CBT plus sham TMS, results from a pilot study show.
In just one year, almost 3 million U.S. teens suffered a major bout of depression, a new government report shows.
“Adolescence is a critical time in a person’s development, and battling with depression can be devastating for teens unless they receive effective treatment,” said Paolo del Vecchio, director of the Center for Mental Health Services at the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).
Brain stimulation often is used for treatment-resistant depression when medications and psychotherapy are not enough to elicit a meaningful response. It is both old and new again: electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) has been used for decades, while emerging technologies, such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), are gaining acceptance.
The underlying premise of neuromodulation is that the brain is an electrochemical organ that can be modulated by pharmacotherapy or device-based approaches, or their combination. ECT is the prototypic device-based neuromodulation approach, and remains one of the most effective treatments for severe depression.
First, researchers are struggling to understand why white individuals, in particular, are doing so poorly with drug abuse. Although there are no definite answers, many speculate that this cohort of patients suffers, in addition to social and economic isolation, from acute job loss. It is known that poverty, stress, and lack of social support are independent risk factors for opioid abuse. Similarly, job loss per se has been found to increase the risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD) and death. Of note, recession alone does not increase CVD mortality; however, when recession is associated with job loss, heart attacks, strokes, and deaths rise. This suggests that increases in stress, despair, and possibly time spent engaging in related unhealthy behaviors often seen with financial insecurity (eg, physical inactivity, smoking, drinking, and drug abuse) may be culprits.
A 9-week study of 16 obese patients who received repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) or a sham treatment suggests that TMS may help obese patients reduce cravings and shed pounds — but these are very early days, and the findings needs to be replicated in much longer, larger studies to confirm safety and efficacy, researchers caution.
Antidepressant medication, often SSRIs like Prozac or Zoloft, and cognitive-behavioral therapy relieve depression in many patients, but not all of them. So wouldn’t it be a big step forward to find an additional kind of treatment that might benefit others? One answer might be TMS, or Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, available only for the past few years.
