The opioid industry's use of scientific evidence to advance claims about prescription opioid safety and effectiveness.

It is widely recognized that pharmaceutical marketing contributed to the ongoing US opioid epidemic, but less is understood about how the opioid industry used scientific evidence to generate product demand, shape opioid regulation, and change clinician behavior. In this qualitative study, we characterize select scientific articles used by industry to support safety and effectiveness claims and use a novel database, the Opioid Industry Documents Archive, to determine notable elements of industry and non-industry documents citing the scientific articles to advance each claim. We found that 15 scientific articles were collectively mentioned in 3666 documents supporting 5 common, inaccurate claims: opioids are effective for treatment of chronic, non-cancer pain; opioids are "rarely" addictive; "pseudo-addiction" is due to inadequate pain management; no opioid dose is too high; and screening tools can identify those at risk of developing addiction.

sp. nov., isolated from Scandinavian patients with seal finger or septic arthritis after contact with seals.

Seal finger (sealer's finger, spekk finger), an extremely painful hand infection contracted by individuals handling seals, has previously been associated with . From 2000 to 2014, six independent strains of a novel species were isolated at Statens Serum Institut, Denmark, from Scandinavian patients with seal finger (M5725, M6447, M6620, M6642 and M6879) or septic arthritis (M6921). Prior to the onset of infection, all patients had reported contact with unspeciated seals.