Cocaine Addiction Treatment and Home Remedies: Use of the Scopolamine Transdermal Patch.
Cocaine Addiction Treatment and Home Remedies: Use of the Scopolamine Transdermal Patch.
Subst Use Misuse. 2013 Aug 7;
Gambelunghe C, Bacci M, Aroni K, De Falco F, Ayroldi EM
Recently, there has been an enormous increase in the number of people seeking treatment for cocaine addiction. Fifteen male cocaine users aged 20-30 years who requested hair analysis from our forensic toxicology laboratory (Perugia, Italy) from March to June 2012, reported using scopolamine without medical supervision to reduce the anxiety associated with cocaine withdrawal. Self-reports were verified with the results obtained from the hair analysis. We discuss whether the use of scopolamine in cocaine abusers could be supported by a neurobiological and pharmacological point of view. HubMed – addiction
Machine learning methods for clinical forms analysis in mental health.
Stud Health Technol Inform. 2013; 192: 1024
Strauss J, Peguero AM, Hirst G
In preparation for a clinical information system implementation, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) Clinical Information Transformation project completed multiple preparation steps. An automated process was desired to supplement the onerous task of manual analysis of clinical forms. We used natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) methods for a series of 266 separate clinical forms. For the investigation, documents were represented by feature vectors. We used four ML algorithms for our examination of the forms: cluster analysis, k-nearest neigh-bours (kNN), decision trees and support vector machines (SVM). Parameters for each algorithm were optimized. SVM had the best performance with a precision of 64.6%. Though we did not find any method sufficiently accurate for practical use, to our knowledge this approach to forms has not been used previously in mental health. HubMed – addiction
Mechanisms of transgenerational inheritance of addictive-like behaviors.
Neuroscience. 2013 Aug 3;
Vassoler FM, Sadri-Vakili G
Genetic factors are implicated in the heritability of drug abuse. However, even with advances in current technology no specific genes have been identified that are critical for the transmission of drug-induced phenotypes to subsequent generations. It is now evident that epigenetic factors contribute to disease heritability and represent a link between genes and the environment. Recently, epigenetic mechanisms have been shown to underlie drug-induced structural, synaptic, and behavioral plasticity by coordinating the expression of gene networks within the brain. Therefore, the epigenome provides a direct mechanism for drugs of abuse to influence the genetic events involved in the development of addiction as well as its heritability to subsequent generations. In this review we discuss the mechanisms underlying intergenerational epigenetic transmission, highlight studies that demonstrate this phenomenon with particular attention to the field of addiction, and identify gaps for future studies. HubMed – addiction