Cochrane

Alcohol withdrawal syndrome (AWS) is a set of symptoms experienced when one reduces or stops alcohol consumption after prolonged periods of alcohol intake. Some studies show that AWS coincides with low levels of magnesium in the blood. Since magnesium may play a role in dampening the excitability of the central nervous system, some researchers believe ...

Media campaigns to prevent illicit drug use are a widespread intervention. We reviewed 23 studies of different designs involving 188,934 young people and conducted in the United States, Canada and Australia. The studies tested different interventions and used several questionnaires to interview the young people about the effects of having participated ...

Advice from doctors helps people who smoke to quit. Even when doctors provide brief simple advice about quitting smoking this increases the likelihood that someone who smokes will successfully quit and remain a nonsmoker 12 months later. More intensive advice may result in slightly higher rates of quitting. Providing follow-up support after offering ...

Background Smoking is a main cause of early death throughout the world. There are a number of medications which can help people to quit smoking. Three of these, nicotine replacement therapy (NRT), bupropion and varenicline, are licensed for this purpose in the USA and Europe. Cytisine (similar to varenicline) is licensed for use in Russia and Eastern ...

Increasing numbers of young people are smoking in developing and poorer countries. Programmes to prevent them starting to smoke have been delivered in schools over the past 40 years. We wanted to find out if they are effective. We identified 49 randomised controlled trials (over 140,000 school children) of interventions aiming to prevent children who ...

People with schizophrenia are very often heavy smokers. It is uncertain whether treatments that have been shown to help other groups of people to quit smoking are also effective for people with schizophrenia. In this review, we analysed studies which investigated a wide variety of interventions. Our results suggested that bupropion (an antidepressant ...

Abuse of opioid drugs and dependence on them causes major health and social issues that include transmission of HIV and hepatitis C with injection, increased crime and costs for health care and law enforcement, family disruption and lost productivity. Addicts, particularly those aged 15 to 34 years, are also at higher risk of death. Managed withdrawal ...

Opium is obtained from the unripe seed capsules of the poppy plant. Opium is usually used by smoking or by swallowing to create a feeling of euphoria, to provide pleasure or as an analgesic or hypnotic. Cultural attitudes affect the patterns of opioid use among different countries. In the Middle East and south east Asia, opium is used in many cases ...

Biomedical risk assessment is the process of giving smokers feedback on the physical effects of smoking using physiological measurements (for example: exhaled carbon monoxide measurement or lung function tests). It has been considered as a tool to encourage smokers to quit. This review includes 15 studies. Of them, only two found that biomedical risk ...

Managed alcohol programmes (MAPs) are harm reduction initiatives that treat the alcohol abuse of vulnerable people by serving controlled amounts of alcohol on a daily schedule, with the goal of ensuring individuals consume safe alcoholic beverages in an environment that has been shown to retain vulnerable people in treatment programmes, decrease alcohol ...