The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of biperiden on nicotine craving in a proof-of-concept clinical study. The study involved 46 male participants (mean age: 45.3±9.31 years) who smoked an average of 20.8 (10.0) cigarettes per day. Participants were randomly assigned to either a biperiden (4 mg/day) or placebo group, with treatment lasting seven days. The outcomes were assessed at baseline (T0) and after seven days (T1) using self-reported questionnaires, including the Questionnaire of Smoking Urges-Brief, the Fagerström Tolerance Questionnaire, and the Beck Anxiety and Depression Inventories. Results: Repeated measures ANOVA revealed a significant Time×Treatment interaction for cigarette consumption (p < 0.001, η²ₚ = 0.340) and craving (p = 0.002, η²ₚ = 0.203), indicating that participants in the biperiden group showed greater reductions than those receiving placebo. For dependence, anxiety, and depression, only the main effect of time was significant (p < 0.05), suggesting general improvement across both groups. Ethnicity did not significantly influence any outcomes, and no relevant adverse effects were reported. These findings suggest that biperiden may represent a promising pharmacological approach for reducing nicotine craving. Further studies with prolonged administration are warranted to evaluate its therapeutic potential for smoking cessation. Registration Number: ensaiosclinicos.gov.br/ Identifier RBR-7qtvbh3.

The increasing number of refugees in the European Union has led to challenges in terms of allocation and housing. Shared accommodation, which often presents vulnerable living conditions, may exacerbate health risks including substance use (SU). This study aimed to identify individual and contextual determinants of substance use behaviours (SUBs) among refugees in shared accommodations.

Buprenorphine, a partial opioid agonist, is widely used as treatment for opioid use disorder. Traditionally, the original opioids are abruptly stopped, whereafter the buprenorphine is titrated over the course of several days. An alternative approach is low-dose buprenorphine initiation (LDBI), where buprenorphine is titrated more gradually, while the original opioids are still being used. Literature suggests LDBI may be associated with less withdrawal symptoms, though no standardized protocol for LDBI currently exists. This study aimed to establish consensus on the application of LDBI in Dutch clinical practice.

Cigarette smoking is a major preventable cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Despite its well-known harms, epidemiological studies have reported potential protective associations between smoking and certain diseases, necessitating a critical appraisal of these claims.

This study aimed to evaluate effects of three machine learning based adjustments made to an eHealth intervention for mild alcohol use disorder, regarding (a) early dropout, (b) participation duration, and (c) success in reaching personal alcohol use goals. Additionally, we aimed to replicate earlier machine learning analyses.

Canada legalized recreational cannabis in October 2018, but commercial retailing took time to develop. This study first explored how self-reported cannabis use prevalence, daily use, product type use, and age of initial use changed during 2019-2023. It then analyzed whether the changes were associated with rising store numbers or falling prices.

Alcohol consumption and tobacco smoking may have synergistic harmful effects when present in combination. This combination is highly prevalent and associated with a multitude of diseases. Brief alcohol intervention (BAI) may be less effective among persons who drink alcohol and smoke tobacco than among persons who drink alcohol and do not smoke. The aim of this study was to find out whether BAI is more effective among adults who do not smoke than among those who smoke.

Gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB) dependence has been associated with a potentially fulminant withdrawal syndrome. As GHB withdrawal symptoms can rapidly progress from mild to more severe, close monitoring during detoxification is important. However, a concise, GHB-specific withdrawal scale is currently lacking. The aim of this study was to compose a concise GHB-specific withdrawal scale as monitoring instrument.

Gambling behaviour among adolescents is a serious public health concern. Adolescents' involvement in gambling is often related with substance use and antisocial behaviours. This study aims to examine the association of substance use and antisocial behaviours with gambling among Italian early adolescents.

The effectiveness of Motivational Interviewing (MI) in addiction treatment has been proven many times. Many national treatment guidelines throughout the EU recommend MI as a method in the treatment of addiction-related and comorbid disorders. However, little is known on the availability of workforce that is able to provide sufficiently quality-secured MI. The aim of this study was to investigate the level of training and the use of MI among addiction care professionals in Germany.

Introduction: Non-prescribed use of opioid agonist treatment (OAT) medications is a public health concern. This study analyzes the prevalence of non-prescribed use and non-fatal overdoses in Norway in 2013 and 2023, a period marked by an increasingly flexible OAT regimen, and examines associations between non-prescribed use and non-fatal overdoses.

Cryptocurrencies are digital assets that differ from traditional currencies in their unique characteristics. An increasing number of individuals are showing interest in cryptocurrency trading and spending long hours engaged in this activity. Current studies point out that some behaviors of cryptocurrency investors may be associated with problematic mental health outcomes. The present study aims to investigate problematic cryptocurrency trading behaviors and to examine these behaviors in terms of gambling disorder and psychological risk factors.

Pathological gambling (PG) is characterized by altered decision-making. Even though studies have investigated decision-making in patients with PG, the effects of win-contingent stimuli thereon are not well understood yet.

Alcohol is widely used but motives for consumption vary. Since drinking motives are proximal predictors of initiation and escalation of alcohol use, accurate measurement of these motives is crucial. The aim of this study was to assess the psychometric properties - including factor structure, internal consistency, and test-retest reliability - of the 12-, 18-, and original 20-item versions of the Drinking Motives Questionnaire (DMQ). Additionally, this study aimed to examine the associations between drinking motives and alcohol use outcomes using network analysis, providing insights into the direct and conditional relationships between different drinking motives and their real-life outcomes.

Understanding shared and unique genetic vulnerability for substance use traits will give insight into the etiology of their comorbidity with psychiatric and other health outcomes.

Personal recovery is an important target in mental health care settings and has been suggested as the "bridging principle" between mental health care and substance use disorder (SUD) treatment. However, few psychometrically evaluated scales exist for measuring personal recovery in SUD research, and the questionnaire about the process of recovery (QPR), a measure of personal recovery widely used in the mental health field, has not been previously psychometrically evaluated in such a context. The aim of this study was to explore the psychometric properties of the 22- and 15-item versions of the Norwegian translation of the QPR in terms of factor structure and internal consistency in an opioid use disorder (OUD) sample.

The medical profession plays a crucial role in preventing and treating substance use disorders. However, the quality of addiction-focused medical education, considering only graduate medical education (GME) and continuing medical education (CME) programs, varies across countries. This study aimed to explore the variety of published programs and curriculum components in competency-based approach to addiction medicine education for physicians and to highlight key areas in this field.

With a global rise in opioid-related mortality, there comes a need to address this with novel therapies. Cannabinoid receptors are highly expressed and co-localised with opiate receptors of the mesolimbic system. Cannabis-based medicinal products (CBMPs) have been suggested as a measure to reduce harm as maintenance therapy for substance use disorder (SUD). This aim of this study was to assess changes in patient-reported outcomes measures (PROMs) and opioid medications in individuals treated with CBMPs for SUD.

Despite substantial health benefits, smoking cessation attempts have high relapse rates. Neuroimaging measures can sometimes predict individual differences in substance use phenotypes - including relapse - better than behavioral metrics alone. No study to date has compared the relative prediction ability of changes in psychological processes across prolonged abstinence with corresponding changes in brain activity.

Norway's heroin-assisted treatment (HAT) project started in 2022, aimed at targeting individuals with severe opioid use disorder (OUD) who did not benefit from first-line, conventional opioid agonist treatment. The use of pharmaceutical diacetylmorphine in HAT may particularly benefit patients with comorbid psychiatric disorders due to its structured nature, which includes daily contact with outpatient clinics. However, previous findings on mental health outcomes in HAT have been inconclusive. The main aim of this study was to explore changes in patients' self-rated mental health and anxiety and depression over the first 12 months of HAT in Norway.

Despite extreme inter-patient differences in the benzodiazepine (BZD) metabolism rate, patients dependent on BZDs or other GABA-A receptor modulators are treated without laboratory control. The proposed detoxification method is the first to employ concentration feedback to prevent routinely unrecognized problems: overaccumulation of a long-acting BZD substitute, high concentration upon discontinuation (mimicking patients' adaptation to "abstinence"), elimination continuing long after treatment conclusion, resulting in delayed low-concentration crises and relapses of drug intake.

Heroin-assisted treatment (HAT) involves the supervised administration of pharmaceutical heroin (diacetylmorphine; DAM), either injectable or oral, for individuals with severe opioid use disorder who have not achieved stabilisation with conventional opioid agonist treatment. Despite its growing adoption, there is limited literature on the phenomenon of diversion in HAT. Diversion refers to the redirecting of legal prescription medications from their intended medical use to illegal or unauthorised use. This study aimed to investigate the reasons for, experiences with, and consequences of DAM diversion, as reported by both patients and treatment providers.

There is evidence that the appetite-regulating hormone insulin plays an important role in alcohol use disorder (AUD), in the sense that there is a negative correlation between insulin and alcohol craving, meaning that an increase in insulin levels leads to a reduction in acute craving. This suggests a promising approach for the acute reduction of craving in the treatment of patients with AUD, which could be achieved via an actively induced short-term increase in insulin levels, e.g., by glucose administration, and which has not yet been investigated in the form of a randomized controlled trial. Another aspect that has not yet been investigated is the role of the insulin-responder-type of each individual, i.e., the time until the insulin peak is reached, in this relationship.

Studies report a high variability of cognitive impairment in people who use drugs, ranging from 20% to 80%. Most research focuses on individuals who use drugs who are either admitted to treatment facilities or incarcerated and being abstinent from substances. The present study aimed to assess cognitive function among populations with ongoing, severe, habitual substance use, mimicking a real-world day-to-day situation.

This study addresses the need to identify mechanisms leading to problem gambling, by examining the relationship between psychological distress, emotion regulation difficulties, and problem gambling severity, taking into consideration the potential moderating role of gender.

Substance misuse significantly impairs psychosocial functioning and correlates with many environmental factors, including working conditions. We investigated the influence of working conditions and other determinants on the risk of substance misuse among healthcare residents of Lyon, France.

Synthetic cannabinoids are novel psychoactive substances with potential for abuse and severe withdrawal symptoms. Despite widespread use, research on withdrawal is limited. We conducted a systematic review of case reports describing SC withdrawal symptoms.