The COVID-19 pandemic and its containment strategies have presented unique challenges to India’s healthcare infrastructure. While a national lockdown initially resulted in the closure of all licensed liquor shops, it also made healthcare facilities dedicated to the treatment of substance use disorders challenging to access. Addiction treatment services have been functioning at limited capacity with a lack of consensus on operating procedures. In this article, we present actual case scenarios where lockdown affected substance use and the treatment process, and discuss the policy implications and considerations for both.

Clinicians need a broad spectrum measurement of psychoactive substance craving (i.e., alcohol and/or drug) to assess collective treatment effects, especially in the context of polysubstance use. In three separate studies, we investigated the psychometric properties of an adapted version of the Penn Alcohol Craving Scale (PACS), designed to measure broad range substance craving.

In Study One, we examined the latent factor structure for craving, as well as concurrent validity with measures of frequency and severity of substance use. In Study Two, we examined the short-term test-retest reliability. In Study Three, we examined the long-term sensitivity to treatment effects at 12month postdischarge.

An inpatient SUD program in Guelph, Ontario, Canada.

Adult patients receiving treatment for SUD Study One, n=971; Study Two, n=35; Study Three, n=191.

We used an adapted version of the PACS, termed the Aggregated Drug Craving Scale (ADCS), and measures of substance use frequency, severity, and abstinence.

In Study One, confirmatory factor analysis supported the unidimensional structure of the craving scale (CFI 0.994, RMSEA 0.071, SRMR 0.010). In addition, statistically significant, medium effect size associations provided evidence of concurrent validity with measures of substance use frequency and severity (CFI=0.992; RMSEA=0.054; SRMR=0.015). In Study Two, the ADCS demonstrated good agreement over two time points (ICC=0.82), exhibiting acceptable short-term retest reliability. In Study 3, the mean craving score decreased significantly from 19.6 at baseline to 7.5 at 12-month follow-up (t=-18.48, p<0.001), demonstrating an ability to detect long-term sensitivity to treatment effects (Cohen’s d=-1.54).

Together, these findings provide initial support for a concise, broad-spectrum measure of aggregated drug cravings among an SUD treatment population.

Together, these findings provide initial support for a concise, broad-spectrum measure of aggregated drug cravings among an SUD treatment population.In 2009, the Swedish government launched a nationwide dissemination and implementation project regarding substance abuse treatment, Knowledge to Practice (KTP), which was commissioned by the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare (SoS).

The study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of a national project to disseminate and implement evidence-based assessment instruments and treatment methods, and to promote cross-sectional collaboration in substance abuse treatment.

This study was a naturalistic prospective follow-up study of a sample of 3063 participants in 203 municipalities via five consecutive online surveys. Of the 21 Swedish regions, we included 20. All participants, representing 79.5% of the population, were employed in substance abuse treatment/care within social work and psychiatry. We used individual background variables and factors in the organizational readiness for change (ORC) questionnaire for prediction.

We calculated descriptive statistics using SPSS 24.0. We applied latent profile l than others over the five years. At the respondent level, the years of employment in treatment work was associated with increased use of assessment instruments, while the ORC factor, institutional resources, predicted decreased use of assessment instruments. Specialist competence and the ORC factors staff attributes (job satisfaction, efficacy, and influence) and institutional resources predicted increased use of psychosocial treatment methods. The ORC factor organizational climate was positively associated with increased cross-sectional collaboration activities.Three-dimensional (3D) culture systems have fueled hopes to bring about the next generation of more physiologically relevant high-throughput screens (HTS). However, current protocols yield either complex but highly heterogeneous aggregates (‘organoids’) or 3D structures with less physiological relevance (‘spheroids’). Here, we present a scalable, HTS-compatible workflow for the automated generation, maintenance, and optical analysis of human midbrain organoids in standard 96-well-plates. The resulting organoids possess a highly homogeneous morphology, size, global gene expression, cellular composition, and structure. They present significant features of the human midbrain and display spontaneous aggregate-wide synchronized neural activity. By automating the entire workflow from generation to analysis, we enhance the intra- and inter-batch reproducibility as demonstrated via RNA sequencing and quantitative whole mount high-content imaging. This allows assessing drug effects at the single-cell level within a complex 3D cell environment in a fully automated HTS workflow.Cerebral cavernous malformation (CCM) is a rare neurovascular disease that is characterized by enlarged and irregular blood vessels that often lead to cerebral hemorrhage. Loss-of-function mutations to any of three genes results in CCM lesion formation; namely, KRIT1, CCM2, and PDCD10 (CCM3). Here, we report for the first time in-depth single-cell RNA sequencing, combined with spatial transcriptomics and immunohistochemistry, to comprehensively characterize subclasses of brain endothelial cells (ECs) under both normal conditions and after deletion of Pdcd10 (Ccm3) in a mouse model of CCM. Integrated single-cell analysis identifies arterial ECs as refractory to CCM transformation. Conversely, a subset of angiogenic venous capillary ECs and respective resident endothelial progenitors appear to be at the origin of CCM lesions. Ropsacitinib JAK inhibitor These data are relevant for the understanding of the plasticity of the brain vascular system and provide novel insights into the molecular basis of CCM disease at the single cell level.