A study on the pattern of drug abuse and demographic characteristics of addicts referred to addiction treatment centers of Kermanshah City, Iran, in 2016

BACKGROUND: The problems of drugs and addiction and the consequences of drug into abuse are considered as a phenomenon that affects different aspects of human life and is one of the main problems of modern age. The main goal of performing this investigation was identifying general demographic factors which affect the process of addiction in order to make available the facility of diagnosis and practice of therapeutic programs.METHODS: In this cross-sectional and descriptive study, a number of 500 addicts in Kermanshah, Iran, were selected using sampling method. Data were analyzed using SPSS software and descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage frequency, cumulative frequency, and average).RESULTS: The mean age of the subjects in this study was 36.6 + 8.80 years. Most addicts were in the age category of 31 to 40 years old. 62.8% of them began drug use for the first time in the age range of 10 to 20 years. 47% had primary education and 68.4% were unemployed and had no specific source of income. The top cause of drug use was reported as entertainment and enjoyment (47.6%) and the other cause was curiosity (26.4%). The most common cause of drug cessation was being tired of drug use.CONCLUSION: With regard to the fact that most addicts are unemployed with no source of income, thus it seems that the authorities have to assess effective treatments and find ways to create youth employment and also healthy entertainment activities and source of income on which one can rely

An in vitro model system based on calcium- and phosphate ion-induced hMSC spheroid mineralization

A challenge in regenerative medicine is creating the three-dimensional organic and inorganic in vitro microenvironment of bone, which would allow the study of musculoskeletal disorders and the generation of building blocks for bone regeneration. This study presents a microwell-based platform for creating spheroids of human mesenchymal stromal cells, which are then mineralized using ionic calcium and phosphate supplementation. The resulting mineralized spheroids promote an osteogenic gene expression profile through the influence of the spheroids’ biophysical environment and inorganic signaling and require less calcium or phosphate to achieve mineralization compared to a monolayer culture. We found that mineralized spheroids represent an in vitro model for studying small molecule perturbations and extracellular mediated calcification. Furthermore, we demonstrate that understanding pathway signaling elicited by the spheroid environment allows mimicking these pathways in traditional monolayer culture, enabling similar rapid mineralization events. In sum, this study demonstrates the rapid generation and employment of a mineralized cell model system for regenerative medicine applications