Drugs and Disease: A Look Forward
First published 2/18/2014. Former National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) director Alan Leshner has been vilified by many for referring to addiction as a chronic, relapsing “brain disease.” What often goes unmentioned is Leshner’s far more interesting characterization of addiction as the “quintessential biobehavioral disorder.”Multifactorial illnesses present special challenges to our way of thinking about disease. Addiction and other biopsychosocial disorders often show symptoms at odds with disease, as people generally understand it. For patients and medical professionals alike, questions about the disease aspe...
Source: Addiction Inbox - July 20, 2014 Category: Addiction Authors: Dirk Hanson Source Type: blogs
Addicts and Disease
Commentary.Former National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) director Alan Leshner has been vilified by many for referring to addiction as a chronic, relapsing “brain disease.” What often goes unmentioned is Leshner’s far more interesting characterization of addiction as the “quintessential biobehavioral disorder.”Multifactorial illnesses present special challenges to our way of thinking about disease. Addiction and other biopsychosocial disorders often show symptoms at odds with disease, as people generally understand it. For patients and medical professionals alike, questions about the disease aspect of addiction ...
Source: Addiction Inbox - February 18, 2014 Category: Addiction Authors: Dirk Hanson Source Type: blogs
Where Are All the New Anti-Craving Drugs?
The dilemma of dwindling drug development.
Drugs for the treatment of addiction are now a fact of life. For alcoholism alone, the medications legally available by prescription include disulfiram (Antabuse), naltrexone (Revia and Vivitrol)—and acamprosate (Campral), the most recent FDA-approved entry. A fourth entry, topiramate (Topamax), is currently only approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for other uses. But none of these are miracle medications, and more to the point, no bright new stars have come through the FDA pipeline for a long time.
New approvals for drugs in this category, like psychiatric d...
Source: Addiction Inbox - April 30, 2013 Category: Addiction Authors: Dirk Hanson Source Type: blogs
