News by Subject Medicine & Health

An international, multidisciplinary team that includes faculty members from The University of Texas at Arlington has published a paper in the journal Philosophical Psychology that wades into the debate about whether fish feel pain.

A new study from Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers finds that new mothers who receive opioids after uncomplicated vaginal births face an increased risk of serious opioid-related events regardless of the opioid dosage, a finding that could significantly impact care delivery.

The opioid prescribing guideline released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2016 has failed to reduce addiction and overdoses, significantly worsened the quality of pain care in the United States and should be revoked, according to a large new survey of patients and healthcare providers.

A study in cells and mice finds a opioid-receptor modifying compound works to relieve pain using the body's own pain-killers, with fewer side effects than opioids.

In the first experimental pain study of CBD in humans, researchers led by Syracuse University's Martin De Vita and Stephen Maisto conclude that CBD pain relief is driven by both pharmacological action and psychological placebo effects. The research is published in the American Psychological Association's Journal of Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology.

Dr. Sabrina Coninx from Ruhr-Universität Bochum and Dr. Peter Stilwell from McGill University, Canada, have investigated how philosophical approaches can be used to think in new ways about pain and its management. The researchers advocate not merely reducing chronic pain management to searching and treating underlying physical changes but instead adopting an approach that focuses on the person as a whole. Their work was published online in the journal "Synthese" on 15 April 2021.

The use of a novel esophagus-sparing technique reduces the rate of severe inflammation of the esophagus in patients with localized lung cancer receiving high-dose radiation and concurrent chemotherapy. Severe esophagitis was reduced despite tumors located within 1 centimeter of the esophagus, with no increased risk in local tumor recurrence.