Over-the-Counter Painkillers Tied to Hearing Loss in Women

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Indiana robbers may be targeting St. Louis pharmacies

fox2now.com/2016/12/19/indiana-robbers-may-be-targeting-st-louis-pharmacies/

Indiana has been NUMBER ONE for several years in a row for pharmacy robberies… both in total number of robberies and the number of robberies per 100,000 population. A year or so ago.. the major chain pharmacies in the Indianapolis/Marion County market installed timed safes in their stores.. where there is a variable time between the time that the Pharmacist enters the combination to open the safe and when the safe will actually open.  As those with three brain cells connected could have expected… the pharmacy robbers have move out to robbing pharmacies outside of the Indianapolis area.

ST. LOUIS (KTVI) – Criminals from Indiana may be heading to Missouri in search of for a certain pharmaceutical; and they think St. Louis is an easier target than Indianapolis.

Word began spreading among independent pharmacies last week that they could be targets. Rick Williams of Ladue and Millbrook pharmacies said pharmacy owners began warning colleagues about people who appeared to be casing stores. Two of them were robbed of oxycodone.

“It has a huge street value, that’s the main reason,” Williams said. “They know they can get a lot of money for it and that’s probably the most popular drug of choice for the drug abusers.”

Last Monday, two armed men stormed Colonial Village pharmacy in Webster Groves. The owner told said he’d heard about a recent Crestwood pharmacy robbery and two men casing other businesses. Then two men stormed his establishment with guns drawn.

Two days later, it was onto another pharmacy; this time in south city at Keller Apothecary. The employees had a game plan. The suspects left without incident and St. Louis police responded quickly and arrested two men.

According to the probable cause statement, the two men were from Indianapolis. One of them reportedly carried a semi-automatic pistol and narcotics. The suspects were identified as 20-year-old Daron Petty and 19-year-old Trei Day.

The probable cause statement also links them to the Webster Groves robbery.

Why were they coming here from Indiana? According to the DEA, Indiana leads the country in pharmacy robberies. Now Indiana is taking action, such as coordinating task forces to crack down. Robbers may think St. Louis is not paying attention.

These local pharmacies hope to prove otherwise.

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A few days ago I made this post  

who wants to help “make a noise” ?

I have set up a Twitter account @PAINEDLIVES

There is a way to create lists to which you can make a tweet to all those on a list.

I have created four lists – for starters  – Fed Representatives & Senators National TV & Newspaper

http://www.senate.gov/senators/contact/

http://www.house.gov/representatives/

www.usnpl.com/

IMO… we need to be able to send out 2-4 tweets a day to various groups about how things are adversely affecting those with subjective diseases … especially chronic pain.

This is a CHRONIC PAIN COMMUNITY PROJECT… if those in the chronic pain community do not “step up to the table” … it will end up falling flat

First step is to move the appropriate twitter addresses on to these lists… the more people that volunteer to get this accomplished.. the quicker it will get done..

Once the first four lists are done… there is a need for participation by a whole bunch of those in the “subjective disease community”

The tweets that are going to be going out will be under @painedlives and otherwise anonymous… I will need a group of 6-12 to go thru what is to be sent out via tweets…

The rest of the community is encouraged to send news articles that needs to be brought to the attention of those in Congress and the Media… Everyone is encouraged to send those article to painedlives@gmail.com.

Any of you interested into helping creating these lists … send me a email steve@steveariens.com and I will give you the login and password for the twitter account.  Please do not start any NEW LISTS… if you have a suggestion for a new list please send it to painedlives@gmail.com

Also anyone interested in being part of the “screening group” please state so in a email to painedlives@gmail.com

President elect Trump will be sworn into office Jan 20th… which is a Friday.. so hopefully we can have the initial lists completed to start sending out tweets on Monday Jan 23, 2017.

Here is what we are up against https://www.dea.gov/pr/news.shtml this lists all the press releases by all 26 DEA regional offices and HQ over the last 15+ yrs..

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CDC: Painkillers Not Driving Spike in Fatal Opioid Overdoses

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/873481

If you notice – you have to do the math… 52,000 died from drug overdoses BUT.. buried within that number there is included abt 19,000 that died of drug overdoses of medications OTHER THAN LEGAL/ILLEGAL OPIATES.. but… most/all of the media is latching on to the 52,000 number and IMPLYING that all those deaths are from opiates.   I guess that the media is not really interested in the DETAILS of the drug overdose deaths… by using the larger number they can claim that there are now more deaths from drug overdoses than people killed by guns.  They use to compare the number to those killed in cars… now that more people are dying from illegal drugs coming from China & Mexico they can have a new/higher number to make claims of how bad the drug OD deaths are…

Keep in mind that the 85,000 annual deaths from use/abuse of the drug Alcohol is more than all the USA soldiers killed in the 12 yr Vietnam war and the 440,000 annual deaths from the use/abuse of the drug Tobacco/Nicotine is more  than the USA soldiers that were killed in the 4 yrs of World War II.

The number of people dying from an opioid overdose rose nearly 16% from 2014 to 2015, but the increase had little to do — at least directly — with prescription painkillers such as oxycodone or hydrocodone, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported last week.

Instead, the chief culprits behind the spike were heroin and illegally manufactured fentanyl (Table 1), according to an article published online December 16 in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).

Roughly 52,000 people died from drug overdoses in 2015, up 11.4% from 2014. Of those deaths last year, 33,091 involved a legal or illegal opioid, a 15.5% increase over 2014.

Table 1. Heroin and Synthetic Opioids Besides Methadone Drive the Increase in Opioid Overdose Deaths

Source: CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, December 16, 2016.

¹ Rates per 100,000 population.

² Adding up the number of deaths by opioid category does not equal the total number of overdose deaths (33,091), because some deaths involved more than one opioid category.

³ Includes morphine, codeine, and semisynthetic prescription opioids such as oxycodone and hydrocodone.

⁴ Methadone is a synthetic opioid.

⁵ These synthetic opioids include tramadol and fentanyl.

Natural opioids such as morphine and semisynthetic opioids such as oxycodone figured into 12,272 deaths in 2015, a 2.6% increase over the year before. However, deaths involving synthetic opioids such as fentanyl and tramadol — but excluding methadone — shot up 72% during that period.

The CDC lays most of the likely blame for this trend on illegally manufactured fentanyl, often mixed with or sold as white heroin powder. An MMWR article published in August reported that the number of drug products obtained by law enforcement that tested positive for fentanyl rose by 426% from 2013 to 2014.

The scourge of synthetic opioids is hitting some Northeast and Midwest states especially hard (Table 2).

Table 2. Overdose Deaths Involving Synthetic Opioids

Heroin was implicated in 12,989 fatal overdoses in 2015, a 20.6% increase over 2014. That toll represents almost 4 out of 10 opioid overdose deaths. South Carolina (57.1%), North Carolina (46.4%), and Maine (45.2%) posted the steepest increases in heroin deaths last year.

In contrast, the number of overdose deaths involving methadone fell from 3400 to 3301, or by 9.1%. The CDC attributes this decline in part to efforts by the US Food and Drug Administration to reduce the use of methadone for pain control through warnings, restrictions on high-dose formulations, and clinical guidance.

The CDC notes that some fatal overdoses were caused by opioids in more than one category. An example might be a combination of a synthetic opioid and a semisynthetic one.

Abuse of Prescription Opioids and Heroin “Intertwined”

Earlier this year, CDC Director Tom Frieden, MD, MPH, described the abuse of prescription opioids as a “doctor-driven epidemic.” That characterization has rung in some physicians’ ears as blame for the entire opioid crisis, including deaths from heroin and illegal fentanyl.

Of all fatal opioid overdoses in 2015, 38% involved natural and semisynthetic opioids normally prescribed by clinicians, but often diverted for illegal street sales. In last week’s MMWR article, the CDC stated that the 2.6% increase during 2015 in these overdose deaths “illustrates an ongoing problem with prescription opioids.” However, the rate of increase has slowed from 2013-2014, “potentially because of policy and health system changes, required prescription drug monitoring program review, legislative changes in naloxone distribution, and prescribing guidelines.”

Tightening up on prescription opioids will reduce the harm caused by heroin and fentanyl because the abuse of legal and illegal opioids is “intertwined,” the CDC said. “Non-medical use of prescription opioids is a significant risk factor for heroin use.”

Besides improving the prescribing habits of clinicians, the CDC recommends other cures for the opioid overdose epidemic:

Improve access to, and the use of, prescription drug-monitoring programs, operating in every state except Missouri.

Intensify efforts to distribute the overdose antidote naloxone.

Expand treatment capacity for opioid-use disorder, including medication-assisted treatment such as naltrexone to manage addiction.

Scale up programs supplying sterile needles and syringes to individuals who inject illegal opioids.

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Honesty/Ethics in Professions

http://www.gallup.com/poll/1654/Honesty-Ethics-Professions.aspx

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I just posted the following note to 15,000 people on Facebook.  Feel free to pass this on to blogs where you are active.

I am sometimes asked “how can I help” with efforts to stop the war against chronic pain patients by their own government. One of the ways may be to write the editors of media outlets that are brave enough to publish dissenting voices such as the article in NY Post, “How the Feds Are Fueling America’s Opioid Disaster”. Please share your own experience as a patient briefly (~250 words is ideal), and especially do so if you have experienced difficulty with doctors who now refuse to treat your pain with effective medications, because of fears of DEA malicious prosecution.

Write at letters@nypost.com . Begin with “I read your recent article on “How the Feds Are Fueling America’s Opioid Disaster”. Then add your own story.

Best regards,
Red Lawhern

Regards and well wishes,
R.A. “Red” Lawhern, Ph.D.
Personal Homepage — “Giving Something Back”
http://www.lawhern.org
lawhern@hotmail.com

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New opioid douses pain without being addictive or deadly in primates

http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/09/new-opioid-douses-pain-without-being-addictive-or-deadly-in-primates/

I wish that I had a dollar for every time that there has been a “media hype” about a new drug discovery because it showed some promise in some animal study…but.. all of its promise(s) quickly fades before it comes to human clinical trials or somewhere along the three human clinical trials… everything FALLS APART. Over my career I have seen “non-addicting” drugs coming to market to only have them to quickly becoming a new drug of choice to abuse.  I would like nothing better to see some medication that will address chronic pain without being abused or produce troublesome side effects like opiates do.  Lyrica was suppose to be the “new & improved” Gabapentin…only to have a few people in the clinical trials to claim that it made them “high” and guess what… the DEA saw a medication for pain that a few people claimed that it made them high and we ended up with a NEW CONTROLLED SUBSTANCE.

Even if  BU08028 survives all the necessary testing and clinical trials to get FDA approval.. no one is going to a prescriber to write for it for 10-15 yrs.

While the opioid epidemic continues kill more than 40 Americans every day, researchers and health experts are frantically searching for ways to curtail use of the highly addictive, pain-quenching drugs. In March, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention even released new guidelines directing doctors to simply refrain from prescribing opioids. But if a new study holds up, the health agency may be able to reverse course.

According to a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an opioid drug referred to as BU08028 was able to alleviate pain in a dozen monkeys just as well as other opioid painkillers, such as morphine. Yet, unlike every other opioid drug, BU08028 showed no signs of being addictive. Even at high dose—at which other opioid drugs inhibit the respiratory and cardiovascular system, which can be fatal—BU08028 was harmless.

“Based on our research, this compound has almost zero abuse potential and provides safe and effective pain relief,” Mei-Chuan Ko, a professor of physiology and pharmacology at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and lead author of the study, said in a statement. “This is a breakthrough for opioid medicinal chemistry that we hope in the future will translate into new and safer, non-addictive pain medications.”

In pain experiments, which involved dipping monkeys’ tails into hot water, BU08028 was a potent pain-killer. A single dose relieved pain for up to 30 hours. Next, in experiments in which the monkeys were trained to self-medicate, BU08028 proved no more habit-forming than a control dose of saline. Scientists forced one group of monkeys to take BU08028, while another group was forced to take morphine. When the drugs were taken away, the monkeys who had taken BU08028 showed no withdrawal symptoms, unlike the monkeys who had blazed on morphine.

BU08028’s lack of nasty side-effects may hinge on its dual-action biochemistry. Like other opioids, it controls pain by targeting the nervous system’s classic μ-opioid peptide receptors, called MOP receptors. But BU08028 also targets “nonclassical” opioid receptors, called NOP receptors for nociceptin receptors, in the nervous system. These receptor proteins generally don’t interact with opioid drugs, yet they share similarities with the receptors that do. NOP receptors regulate pain, like their MOP counterparts, but they are also involved in a host of other brain functions, such as memory, cardiovascular functions, and anxiety.

“To our knowledge, the present study provides the first functional evidence in nonhuman primates that BU08028 with mixed MOP/NOP agonist activities is an effective and safe analgesic without apparent abuse liability or other opioid-associated side effects,” the authors conclude.

Next, the researchers hope to test BU08028 at treating chronic pain without risks of addiction or overdoses. Regardless of BU08028’s fate in subsequent trials, the researchers are hopeful that the strategy of co-activating NOP and MOP receptors will eventually lead to a safer painkiller.

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How the feds are fueling America’s opioid disaster

nypost.com/2016/12/19/how-the-feds-are-fueling-americas-opioid-disaster/

One has to look at this problem from those on “both sides of the fence”… while it is definitely worse for not only those with chronic pain… it also impacts all those pts that have a valid medical necessity for using a controlled substance… which includes more than just opiates for pain. It has impacted prescribers, wholesalers, pharmacies, pharmacists and all those involved in the legal distribution of medications.  From the other side of  “the fence”… those within our judicial system that part or all of their job on fighting the war on drugs… We officially declared the war on drugs in 1970 and we have spent > ONE TRILLION dollars since then and continue to spend 51 BILLION/yr in fighting this war. One has to wonder if the actions taken by bureaucrats have more to do with job security by those in our judicial system than actually trying to address the problem… The only other “social war” that has been going on longer and we have spent more money on is the “war on poverty” which was declared in 1965 and some believe has had a similar success rate.  After spending 15 TRILLION dollars and we currently have 15% of Americans living in poverty… the highest percent ever of the population since we started fighting that war.

Federal policy is unquestionably making the nation’s opioid problem worse — while also inflicting collateral damage on Americans in genuine need of pain medication.

And this disaster is being further driven by a myth that has gained additional credence from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s latest guidelines for prescribing opioids.

The myth: that lax prescription of opioid drugs, such as oxycodone, is a primary driver of addiction. This notion has triggered a nationwide crackdown on these prescriptions in the name of preventing addiction and saving lives, an action that has been a catastrophe by almost any measure.

Dissenting opinions do exist. Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing, a group that promotes strict control of prescriptions, admits that chronic pain patients have a “very legitimate fear” of restrictions. Yet the group, which was involved in formulating the CDC guidelines, nonetheless recommends a one-size-fits-all daily cap on the permissible opioid dose, regardless of the patient.

Reviewers have rightly criticized PROP for using shoddy evidence in support of its findings. In the past decade, more than a dozen professional papers — including a systematic analysis known as a “Cochrane Review” of 26 other studies, and a 38-study review in the journal Pain — have debunked the idea that addiction routinely starts with legal use. In most cases, it doesn’t; people who use prescription opioids properly and legally rarely become addicts.

Overwhelmingly, the ones who become addicted are those who start off using opioids for recreational purposes. The next stop is street drugs.

Paradoxically, the CDC guidelines managed to harm both addicts and patients with legitimate needs in one fell swoop. Consider OxyContin — a major drug of choice for addicts that in 2010 was reformulated to make it far harder to abuse.

Illegal OxyContin use did indeed plummet immediately — but abusers then switched in droves to heroin, which is far more dangerous, and deaths from heroin overdose soared from 3,000 in 2009 to 13,000 in 2015.

Worse still, black-marketeers are now blending fentanyl — a highly potent, synthetic version of heroin — with heroin itself, or substituting it outright for the “natural” drug. That’s responsible for much of the soaring ODs.

The Department of Health in Ohio — which has the highest number of opioid deaths in the nation — reported in 2015 that more than 80 percent of opioid deaths arose from heroin or fentanyl, up from 20 percent in 2010. Health agencies in Florida and Massachusetts report similar trends. It’s now indisputable that most recent opioid deaths result from heroin/fentanyl, not pain pills.

Another side of the equation is the cruel and needless suffering inflicted on blameless Americans who can no longer easily get pain medications. Just as addicts will do almost anything to feed their addiction, people in severe pain will do what is needed to escape it — even suicide.

Indeed, escaping pain is becoming increasingly difficult. People who have been treated appropriately and responsibly for years are now finding it difficult to obtain the relief they need, even from the same doctors. And you can’t blame the doctors.

Physicians rightly view the CDC “advice” as anything but voluntary. With the DEA looking over their shoulders, they fear losing their licenses for overprescribing. This creates just another wall between doctors and patients, many of whom are now forced to cope with their pain by using non-opioid, over-the-counter drugs such as Advil and Tylenol. These drugs are less effective and also carry their own risks, chiefly liver, kidney, stomach and heart toxicity.

But perhaps nothing illustrates the folly of government policies better than the rising number of pain sufferers who turn to street heroin because they can no longer get legal medication. What a travesty.

As a nation, we now find ourselves in a worse place than before this simple-minded crackdown began. While the most vulnerable suffer, rivers of the real killer drugs pour into our country illegally unabated.

“First, do no harm” is the essence of the Hippocratic Oath. Federal policymakers should honor that principle — and abandon their cruel and unconscionable war on pain medication.

Josh Bloom is director of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the American Council on Science and Health.

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MatchMyRx: An App that helps patients understand their prescriptions by matching their Meds with their Conditions

http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/3180788

Miami, FL PRX Control Solutions, a digital health company that offers a smart prescription platform to health plans and payers recently launched a Web App to help patients increase awareness of their medications.

According to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, more than 100 million* Americans with chronic ailments often suffer from multiple conditions and take multiple medications at the same time, making it harder for them to understand which treatment goes with each illness. At the same time, patients often don’t receive a complete diagnosis, leaving their records uncoded, which may affect the patient’s future quality of care. A recent case study conducted by PRX with more than 1 million prescriptions from Medicare patients, revealed that more than 13% of the prescriptions didn’t match a diagnosis of the patient.

MatchMyRx is a free web application that let’s patients match their conditions to medications, alerting them of improper prescriptions, controlled substances and off-label indications. MatchMyRx  also wants to empower patients to take more control over their health, improving their medication adherence and the communication with their healthcare providers.

With MatchMyRx patients get a free prescription record they can share with their doctors and family members. The Web App may also be used by healthcare professionals to provide more prescription data to their patients and by med students to learn prescription patterns.

MatchMyRx also wants to prevent medical errors, prescription abuse and reduce overall healthcare costs.

The team behind PRX believes that a solution like MatchMyRx may help patients be more aware and informed about their medications and help reduce the abuse and waste of opioids and antibiotics, which costs the US government billions of dollars each year.**

Twitter: @matchmyrx

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/matchmyrx

About PRX Control Solutions: PRX is digital health company based in Miami, Florida that offers a smart prescription platform to health plans and payers, focused on detecting improper prescriptions, abuse and waste, and on providing better prescription data to their clients. PRX has been part of Wayra and Venture Hive’s accelerator program in Miami. 

Media Contact
Company Name: FL PRX Control Solutions
Contact Person: Alfredo Vaamonde
Email: alfredo@prxcontrolsolutions.com
Country: United States
Website: matchmyrx.com

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Beijing denies US claim that China is synthetic drug king

http://newsok.com/article/feed/1134723

There are people/entities in China that are addicted to the money that is being generated by all the illegal synthetic drugs that they are producing and selling in the USA… the DEA is addicted to the power and budgets that they are in denial that they are only seizing only 4% of what is being produced and eventually gets sold on our “streets” and TENS OF THOUSANDS are dying every year from using/abusing and INCREASING…

BEIJING (AP) — U.S. assertions that China is the top source of the synthetic opioids that have killed thousands of drug users in the U.S. and Canada are unsubstantiated, Chinese officials told The Associated Press.

Both the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy point to China as North America’s main source of fentanyl, related drugs and the chemicals used to make them.

Such statements “lack the support of sufficient numbers of actual, confirmed cases,” China’s National Narcotics Control Commission told DEA’s Beijing office in a fax dated Friday.

In its letter, which the commission also sent to AP, Chinese officials urged the U.S. to provide more evidence about China’s role as a source country.

+1 photos

DEA officials said their casework and investigations consistently lead back to China. DEA data also shows that when China regulates synthetic drugs, U.S. seizures plunge.

“China is not the only source of the problem, but they are the dominant source for fentanyls along with precursor chemicals and pill presses that are being exported from China to the U.S., Canada and Mexico,” said Russell Baer, a DEA special agent in Washington.

Beijing is concerned enough about international perceptions of China’s role in the opioid trade that after AP published investigations highlighting the easy availability of fentanyls online from Chinese suppliers, the narcotics commission made a rare invitation to a team of AP journalists to discuss the issue at the powerful Ministry of Public Security, a leafy complex just off Tiananmen Square at the historic and political heart of Beijing.

U.S.-China cooperation is essential for mounting an effective global response to an epidemic of opioid abuse that has killed more than 300,000 Americans since 2000. The presence of fentanyl, a prescription painkiller up to 50 times stronger than heroin, and related compounds in the U.S. drug supply began to rise in 2013, after dealers learned they could multiply profits by cutting the potent chemicals into heroin, cocaine and counterfeit prescription pills.

Even as the U.S. Congress considers legislation to punish opioid source countries, no government agency has produced comprehensive data on seizures of fentanyl-related substances by country of origin.

The national database on drug seizures overseen by DEA does not require reporting by source country and may not accurately reflect seizures of all fentanyl-related compounds. Baer said it didn’t even have a “fentanyl” category until around two years ago. It also takes time for chemists to identify seized drugs, which means fentanyl-related samples may get incorrectly logged as other drugs.

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy declined to comment.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said it had data by country of origin only for 2015: Nearly two-thirds of the 61 kilograms (134 pounds) of fentanyl seized last year came from Mexico. The rest came from China.

DEA officials say Mexican cartels are key bulk suppliers of fentanyl to the U.S., but portray Mexico as a transshipment point. Mexican officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to be quoted, said fentanyl and its precursors were coming from China. Only two labs trying to produce fentanyl from scratch have been located in Mexico in recent years, with others apparently taking simpler steps to turn precursors into fentanyl, the officials said.

Mexican authorities did not immediately respond to requests for seizure data by country of origin.

There is plenty of anecdotal evidence indicating that China plays an important role in the fentanyls trade, and despite disagreements, Chinese authorities have been proactive in trying to stop fentanyl manufacture and export.

Chinese companies offering to export synthetic opioids are easy to find, the AP found in investigations published in October and November. China’s narcotics commission said it was scrutinizing 12 opioid vendors the AP identified, along with others that advertise fentanyl analogs.

In some cases, China has enacted faster, more comprehensive changes to its drug control laws than much of the rest of the world. Beijing already regulates fentanyl and 18 related compounds and is considering designating four more: carfentanil, furanyl fentanyl, acryl fentanyl and valeryl fentanyl, the narcotics commission told AP. In the meantime, the commission told AP it warned Chinese vendors and websites that carfentanil and other analogs are harmful and should not be sold.

The resulting ripple of anxiety prompted some companies to recommend alternative opioids, like U-47700, the AP found in conversations with a dozen vendors. “Friend, fent is illegal in China,” wrote one. “It is dangerous for us.”

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