Issues: Despite the large number of effective psychological interventions for alcohol use disorders (AUD), there is still a lack of clarity concerning the strategies that make these interventions effective.
Approach: The overall goal of this review was to identify, examine and synthesise the information about common strategies from evidence-based psychological interventions for AUDs by conducting a review of systematic reviews, that is, a meta-review. We isolated the relevant primary studies from eligible systematic reviews and extracted information about the interventions from these studies to understand the strategies used.
Opioid abuse has become a major public health crisis that affects millions of individuals across the globe. This widespread abuse of prescription opioids and dramatic increase in the availability of illicit opioids have created what is known as the opioid epidemic. Pregnant women are a particularly vulnerable group since they are prescribed for opioids such as morphine, buprenorphine, and methadone, all of which have been shown to cross the placenta and potentially impact the developing fetus.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOxycodone (oxy) is a semi-synthetic opioid commonly used as a pain medication that is also a widely abused prescription drug. While very limited studies have examined the effect of in utero oxy (IUO) exposure on neurodevelopment, a significant gap in knowledge is the effect of IUO compared with postnatal oxy (PNO) exposure on synaptogenesis-a key process in the formation of synapses during brain development-in the exposed offspring. One relatively unexplored form of cell-cell communication associated with brain development in response to IUO and PNO exposure are extracellular vesicles (EVs).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrevious research has established sex differences associated with nicotine intake, however a significant gap in knowledge remains regarding the molecular mechanisms that govern these differences at the transcriptional level. One critical regulator of transcription are microRNAs (miRNAs). miRNAs are a family of non-coding RNAs that regulate an array of important biological functions altered in several disease states, including neuroadaptive changes within the brain associated with drug dependence.
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