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Background and Aims: Topiramate is a medication that is widely prescribed to treat a variety of conditions, including alcohol use disorder (AUD). We used electronic health record (EHR) data to measure topiramate's effects on drinking in individuals differentiated by a history of AUD., Design: Parallel-groups comparison of patients prescribed topiramate and a propensity score-matched comparison group., Setting: A large US integrated health-care system., Participants: Patients with Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test-Consumption (AUDIT-C) scores prior to and after a minimum of 180 days of topiramate prescription for any indication and a propensity score-matched group. The sample included 5918 patients with an electronic health record diagnosis of alcohol use disorder at any time (AUD-hx-pos) (1738 topiramate-exposed and 4180 controls) and 23 614 patients with no EHR diagnosis of AUD (AUD-hx-neg) (6324 topiramate-exposed and 17 290 controls)., Measurements: Regression analyses compared difference-in-difference (DiD) estimates, separately by AUD history. DiD estimates represent exposure-group (i.e. topiramate versus control) differences on the pre-post difference in AUDIT-C score. Effects of baseline AUDIT-C score and daily topiramate dosage were also tested., Findings: AUD-hx-neg patients who received topiramate had a greater reduction in AUDIT-C score (-0.11) than matched controls (-0.04). This yielded a DiD score of -0.07 [95% confidence interval (CI) = -0.11,-0.03; P = 0.002], with the greatest effect among AUD-hx-neg patients with a baseline AUDIT-C score of 4+ (DiD = -0.35, 95% CI = -0.49, -0.21; P < 0.0001) and those prescribed > 150 mg/day of the medication (DiD = -0.15, 95%CI = -0.23, -0.07; P < 0.001)., Discussion: Among individuals with no history of alcohol use disorder, topiramate appears to be associated with reduced drinking. This small effect is most evident among patients with higher baseline drinking levels and at a higher average daily topiramate dosage., (© 2022 Society for the Study of Addiction.)

Study Objectives: Prescription use and misuse of opioids are linked to greater sleep disturbance. However, there are limited data on the prevalence of sedative-hypnotic medication use among persons who use opioids. Therefore, this study examined whether past-year sedative-hypnotic use among persons who used/misused opioids was higher than among individuals who did not use opioids., Methods: Data were acquired from the US National Survey on Drug Use and Health for 2015-2018. Use of a sedative benzodiazepine (temazepam, flurazepam, triazolam) or a Z-drug (eszopiclone, zaleplon, zolpidem) was examined in relation to use/misuse of an opioid within the past year. Logistic regression models estimated the associations between opioids and sedative-hypnotics using inverse probability of treatment weighting. A secondary machine learning analysis tested 6 binary classifiers to predict sedative-hypnotic use based on opioid use/misuse and other covariates., Results: Of 171,766 respondents, 24% used a prescription opioid whereas 3.6% misused an opioid in the past year. Among those who used a prescription opioid, 1.9% received a sedative benzodiazepine and 9% received a Z-drug during the same time frame. Use of an opioid was associated with greater odds of sedative benzodiazepine use (odds ratio, 4.4; 95% confidence interval, 3.61-5.4) and Z-drug use (odds ratio, 3.8; 95% confidence interval, 3.51-4.09), and stronger associations were noted for misuse of an opioid. Machine learning models accurately classified sedative-hypnotic medication use for > 70% of respondents based on opioid use/misuse., Conclusions: Sedative-hypnotic use is common among persons who use opioids, which is of concern given the elevated mortality risk with concurrent use of these substances., Citation: Tubbs AS, Ghani SB, Naps M, Grandner MA, Stein MD, Chakravorty S. Past-year use or misuse of an opiod is associated with use of a sedative-hypnotic medication: a US National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) study. J Clin Sleep Med. 2022;18(3):809-816., (© 2022 American Academy of Sleep Medicine.)

Primary and metastatic ovarian carcinomas from six patients were obtained during primary exploratory laparotomy. Tumor cells were synthetically radiolabeled with [35S]methionine. Radiolabeled cellular proteins of the primary and metastatic cells were examined by two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis followed by autoradiography. Computer assisted analysis of the resultant autoradiograms revealed that the amounts of only two proteins, p35 and p36, were consistently and significantly decreased in the metastatic tumor cells. No other consistent differences in protein synthesis between primary and metastatic tumors were detected.