At least 204 deaths have been linked to the misuse of anxiety drug Xanax in the UK since 2015, figures seen by the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire programme reveal. Of these, there were 126 fatalities in Scotland between 2015 and 2017. Counterfeit Xanax bars with a street value of more than £1m have been seized at… Read More »
WASHINGTON — A new study offers some of the strongest evidence yet of the connection between the marketing of opioids to doctors and the nation’s addiction epidemic. It found that counties where opioid manufacturers offered a large number of gifts and payments to doctors had more overdose deaths involving the drugs than counties where direct-to-physician… Read More »
Death rates from a form of bowel cancer are predicted to increase by almost 60 per cent in Australia by 2035, a study shows. The global study, published in the International Journal of Cancer on Wednesday predicts death rates from rectal cancer will increase in Australia by almost 59.2 per cent in 16 years. Meanwhile,… Read More »
We’re in the midst of an opioid overdose epidemic in the U.S., and the synthetic opioid fentanyl has now surpassed heroin and oxycodone as the leading cause of overdose deaths. In 2016, fentanyl was involved in nearly 30 percent of drug overdose deaths, accounting for more than 18,300 deaths that year.1 It’s a sharp rise… Read More »
There were around 50,100 excess winter deaths in England and Wales in 2017-18 – the highest since the winter of 1975-76, figures from the Office for National Statistics show. The increase is thought to be down to the flu, the ineffectiveness of the flu vaccine in older people and spells of very cold weather last… Read More »