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The on-line survey of 941 respondents assessed subjective changes in respiratory symptoms in smokers who switched to vaping for at least two months. The results, published in the  Journal of Addiction Research & Therapy , show that 66 per cent of respondents reported an improvement in respiratory symptoms, 29 per cent reported no change and 5 per cent reported worsening. Senior author Professor Peter Hajek from QMUL said: "There is no doubt that e-cigarettes are much safer than conventional cigarettes, but smokers are still led to believe that they're dangerous. This misinformation includes a misreported study on rats that claimed that vaping may increase vulnerability to infections. These new findings from human vapers show that this is not the case. "The study needs to be interpreted with caution because it is based on self-reported data, and further studies using objective measures are needed. However, the present results provide sufficient information to sug...

he findings, published in the  Nature  journal  Neuropsychopharmacology  in August, show for the first time that morphine tolerance is due to an i nflammatory response prod uced in the brain. This brain inflammation is caused by the release of cytokines, chemical messengers in the body that trigger an immune response, similar to a viral infection. Researchers' results show blocking a particular cytokine eliminated morphine tolerance, and they were able to reduce the dose of morphine required to alleviate pain by half. "These results have important clinical implications for the treatment of pain and also addiction," said Lori Eidson, lead author and a graduate student in the laboratory of Dr. Anne Murphy in the Neuroscience Institute of Georgia State. "Until now, the precise underlying mechanism for opioid tolerance and its prevention have remained unknown." Over 67 percent of the United States population will experience chronic pain at some point in thei...

These are the questions being addressed by a team of researchers based at the Australian National Drug Research Institute, Curtin University, Australia, who have analysed the tools used to identify substance abuse and addiction to understand how they contribute to or stabilise the realities of addiction. The researchers, Dr Robyn Dwyer and Dr Suzanne Fraser, writing in the journal  Health Sociology Review , identify five key processes by which the tools used to screen or diagnose addiction which help to establish, standardise and normalise an addiction within an individual. They conclude that some of the tools may contribute to establishing an addiction, and suggest further research into the choice of tools used. Dwyer and Fraser identify five key processes by which these tools can be analysed and considered to establish or standardise an addiction; reduction, expression, quantification, normalisation and populationisation. They believe that through these processes more and...