Suboxone treatment against opiate-based pain killer addiction increases in demand in many different institutions offering treatment. Mc Dowell County’s new Suboxone clinic in West Virginia announced on April that there more and more people are interested in being treated.

Exective Chief Judy Akers of the Southern Highlands Community Mental Health Center stated that the new clinic in Mc Dowell County is not able to cater to clients immediately. In April, it was reported that there are more or less 140 people waiting for treatment on top of the 24 who are already admitted.

Mercer County also has a long waiting list for drug treatment while Wyoming County needs to open up their own clinic.  Due to this, there is also an increase in demand for doctors to increase and improve services. Akers concluded that having this many people seeking for treatment is a bad sign because it also means that there are more who are not seeking help.

There is no exact number of days of treatment per person. It depends on the person how long he or she is willing to stay and on the treatment needs. Thus the need to expand local treatment options and at the moment, “We are determining other ways of bringing more services,” stated by Akers “As of now though, we are relying to the only resources we have at hand and hoping for the best.”

There are many similar cases around the country and to support this growing demand for suboxone treatment, FDA recently approved the first generic equivalent to Suboxone manufactured by Amneal pharmaceuticals just recently in March.

According to Amneals’s President and Co-Chairman Chirag Patel, “The FDA’s decision in approving the generic drug will warrant that millions of patients will have easier access to a low cost but high quality generic substitute.”

Having such will lessen costs for individuals seeking treatments. It also saves the U.S. healthcare system one 500 million dollars everyday, according to the Generic Pharmaceutical Association. Even insurance companies, managed care facilities, drug addiction and recovery organizations and any other institution and organization involved with Suboxone treatment will benefit on it.

Meanwhile in Dallas, during the same month of the approval of the generic Suboxone, discount cards were issued by AffordRx for Suboxone which can save 75% of the cost. This is a way to help individuals on Suboxone treatment to receive the medication they need and to encourage more opioid-based drug addicts to seek treatment.

In the effort to strengthen the government’s multifaceted approach in the fight against prescription drug abuse, the federal regulators have relaxed the restrictions on physicians prescribing buprenorphine, the standard treatment given to patients with opioid dependence.

This latest development was announced by White House drug czar and Director of the US Office of Nat’l Drug Control Policy Gil Kerlikowske during the National Advocacy Conference by the American Medical Association in Washington on Feb. 13. This new rule change is welcomed by doctors as it gives them better flexibility when dispensing or prescribing buprenorphine to patients.

According to Kerlikowske, the final buprenorphine rule announced by White House in December 2012 is the answer to the federal policy on buprenorphine use which the Obama administration described as restrictive. The new rule now permits physicians to prescribe buprenorphine products as take-home medicines to patients belonging to certain programs, even without specifying the patient’s treatment period. The rule change increases flexibility which is justified by research and experience with buprenorphine addiction treatment products and buprenorphine’s safety profile.

During his discussion of the new regulation, Kerlikowske recognized the importance of physicians and the AMA as committed partners working together to address the problem of opioid addiction and to effectively put into effect the new rule. He said that to discover doctor shopping and lessen the prevalence of pill mills, inputs from doctors and other health care professionals are necessary.

Kerlikowske also observed that Americans trust their health care providers so that they are in the position to intervene early. He emphasized the role of medical practitioners as being on the frontlines and appealed to them to be vigilant and practice safe opioid dispensing when giving painkiller prescriptions and discussing proper use of medicines.

A research conceptualized by Dr. Nora Volkow, the director of National Institute on Drug Abuse and spearheaded by George Koob of the Scripps Institute, California tests the possibility of buprenorphine and naltrexone combination to combat cocaine addiction.

The drugs are used to treat opioid-based painkiller addictions were found out to reduce cocaine use in a laboratory study with rats as specimens. Some clinical trials were also done with humans and that the studies showed positive results. There is a significant reduction of the use of cocaine when buprenorphine is used according to Volkow.

If the researches will prove more of the hypothesis, then it will be the first drug that will treat cocaine addiction.

The study which was published in Science Translational Medicine showed that the rats were divided into two groups. The first group was comparable to the causal cocaine users while the second group to cocaine addicts. The first group was given cocaine one hour a day which results to non-dependency on cocaine. The second group on the other hand was given cocaine for six hours a day. Rats showed dependence by compulsively seeking cocaine and really work to get it.

These rats were then given the combination drugs. It turned out that these did not have any effect with the first group since there was no dependency but had significant effects with the second. However, it was also found out that higher doses of naltrexone drug prevented the buprenorphine from acting and thus reduction of cocaine use did not occur. The lowest dose of naltrexone proved to enhance the buprenorphine instead.

“When I heard the results, I was very pleased,” says Volkow. Because of this, a clinical trial was done to individuals who use both opioids and cocaine. If the study produces positive results, further study will be done with individuals who are addicted to cocaine alone. Volkow adds that since methamphetamine and cocaine has the same effects in the brain, the treatment could be applied to meth users as well.

Volkow and Koop are also looking for possibilities of the combination drugs treating other conditions involving imbalance in kappa receptors such as chronic pain, obsessive compulsive disorder, depression and schizophrenia.

In 2012, Tennessee hospitals reported that almost 50% of newborn babies struggle from withdrawal due to others being addicted to methadone. Shockingly, nurses claim to have admitted at least one baby a day who is undergoing withdrawal that some hospitals have to open a room in the NICU for treatment of these infants.

In the same year, researchers stated that US babies born from mothers with opiate drug addiction has tripled in a decade. The increase may be traced from more than 1 per 1,000 in 2000 to more than 3 per 1,000 in 2009. More or less 13,000 infants were experiencing withdrawal symptoms in 2009.

This was supported by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality from their survey stating that infants experiencing withdrawal symptoms after birth increased to 45% since 1995 due to mothers misusing and addiction of painkillers.

Others states with rampant crease with these infants are West Virginia, Florida, Maine, parts of the Midwest and some sections in the US. Dr. Stephen Patrick a newborn specialist from the University of Michigan called the situation a “public health epidemic” and is believed to be the 21^st century version of the “crack baby” epidemic in the 1980’s.

Withdrawal symptoms occur at different severities. These depend on the amount of opioid-based painkiller the mother last consumed. The American Academy of Pediatrics stated that infants whose mother has consumed opioid-based painkillers such as methadone can manifest withdrawal symptoms within 24 to 72 hours after delivery.

Marie Hayes, a scientist from the University of Maine made a research on the effect of dependence on methadone and other opiate-drugs to infants in terms of development. Results of the research suggests that there are developmental delays. cognitive problems, and ADHD occurring on these infants.

By 2010, deaths from drug overdose reached 38,000 cases in the United States. Presently, it is the country’s leading cause of unnatural death. Opiates like the street drug Heroin and prescription opioid analgesic Oxycontin are the top cause of lethal overdose, tripling the number of its cases or more since the 1990s.

Most drug addicts die of overdose because they were not taken to the hospital right away. Many people who have been on the scene stay mum or move away. For the fear of being involved in a drug-related crime, they do not call the emergency hotline.

The District of Columbia, together with 11 other states, currently enacted laws that protect people on the scene of an underage alcoholic drinking, drug possession or its use and other crimes alike. This, they believe, will encourage them to intervene and call 911.

Known as Overdose Prevention Act in Columbia, it states that any evidence will not be used against the caller if the drug is proved to be for health care purposes. It will also prevent people who are overdosing from getting arrested should they seek help. In some states though, the laws applied offer weaker protections.

New Jersey may soon follow, waiting for Governor Chris Christie to announce his support any day now on Overdose Prevention Act with Good Samaritan Provision. Initially, he opposed the act saying it will let drug dealers go away but was later convinced by parents of overdose victims.

Reports have been going around that a drug that is for the treatment of opioid dependence known as Suboxone has been found to be illegally entering the prison institutions of the state of Ohio. The drug has been found to be hidden in so many different ways just so it could enter the prisons of Ohio. Among the various ways that the Suboxone drug is illegally entered into the prisons that

the prison workers have found out are: liquefying the drug just enough so that it can be hidden on the sticky back part of a postage stamp, dissolving the drug just enough to hide them inside the leaves of a book and also by crushing and dissolving a bit the drug and placed inside the creases of an envelope.

The other ways that the drug Suboxone is being smuggled into the prison also include sewing the tablets into clothing, trodding on the pills to crush them and hide them in shoes and also inside the spines of a magazine. An official also said that some letters are sprayed with perfumes to mask the smell of the drug and also to confuse the dogs sniffing out these drugs. It is said that the reason for this is that some prisons have no treatment facilities for the prisoners undergoing withdrawal syndromes.