At the state level, opioid overdose death rates are actually higher for black, non-Hispanic individuals than for white individuals in Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia. In Washington state, the drug and the opioid-involved overdose death rate for American Indians and Alaska Natives also far surpasses that of white individuals.
Cities like Chicago are also seeing this trend. Black individuals in Chicago make up about a third of the population but almost half of the opioid-related deaths.
However, new treatments and clinical trials are starting to rise, including this latest discovery. Cannabidiol (CBD) has been receiving a lot of attention lately as a potential treatment for everything from epilepsy to anxiety. Now, researchers report it might also help curb the cravings that come with opioid addiction.
Like marijuana, CBD comes from the cannabis plant. Unlike pot, it does not produce a high.
The study included 42 men and women with a history of heroin abuse who
were not current users. Heroin is an illegal opioid. Other opioids include powerful prescription medications such as oxycodone (OxyContin).
For the study, participants received either an oral CBD solution or an inactive placebo and then were shown videos that contained neutral and drug-related cues. Neutral cues included relaxing scenarios such as scenes of nature, while drug-related cues included scenes of IV drug use and heroin-related items such as syringes, rubber ties and packets of powder.
The researchers found that, compared to a placebo, CBD reduced drug cue-induced craving and anxiety in the participants.
“Our findings indicate that CBD holds significant promise for treating individuals with heroin use disorder,” said first author Yasmin Hurd. She is the director of the Addiction Institute at Mount Sinai in New York City.
“A successful non-opioid medication would add significantly to the existing addiction medication toolbox to help reduce the growing death toll, enormous health care costs, and treatment limitations imposed by stringent government regulations amid this persistent opioid epidemic,” she said in a Mount Sinai news release.
The United States is struggling with an opioid epidemic that’s claimed more than 300,000 lives since it began. Two current opioid addiction treatments are
methadone and buprenorphine, which work on the same opioid receptors as heroin and other opioids.
But because these treatments carry a stigma, have their own addiction risk and are tightly regulated, millions of Americans with opioid addiction won’t use them, the study authors explained.
That’s why there’s an urgent need to find other treatments, the researchers noted.
The report was published in the American Journal of Psychiatry.
Hurd’s team is now working on two follow-up studies: one to examine how CBD affects the brain, and another to pursue the development of CBD-based treatments for opioid addiction.
For more information on opioid addiction and treatment options, visit our Health Conditions page on BlackDoctor.org.
SOURCE: Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, news release, May 21, 2019
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