Opioid and stimulant attributed treatment admissions and fatal overdoses: Using national surveillance data to examine the intersection of race, sex, and polysubstance use, 1992-2020.

BACKGROUND: We use national surveillance data to evaluate race/ethnicity by sex/gender differences and trends in substance use treatment admissions and overdose deaths involving opioid and stimulant use. METHODS: We used data (1992-2019) from the Treatment Episode Dataset-Admissions to identify treatment admissions and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's Wide-Ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research (1999-2020) to identify overdose deaths. We assessed treatment admissions and related drug overdose deaths per 100,000 adults by sex and race/ethnicity for opioid and stimulant groups: cocaine, opioid, methamphetamines, cocaine and opioid use, cocaine and methamphetamines, and opioid and methamphetamines. RESULTS: We found significant variations in treatment admissions and deaths by race/ethnicity and sex/gender. Cocaine-related treatment admissions and deaths were most prevalent among Non-Hispanic Black individuals over the study years, yet lower rates were evident among individuals from other racial/ethnic groups. Notably, Non-Hispanic Black men experienced larger increases in cocaine-only admissions than men of other racial/ethnic groups between 1992 and 2019. Men had higher opioid and stimulant treatment admissions and overdose deaths than women. We observed skyrocketing methamphetamine deaths among American Indian/Native Alaskan men and women from 1992 to 2019. DISCUSSION: Steep increases in overdose deaths fueled by methamphetamines among Non-Hispanic Native Americans and cocaine among Non-Hispanic Black individuals suggest a need for more effective interventions to curb stimulant use. Variations by race/ethnicity and sex/gender also suggest interventions should be developed through an intersectionality lens.

GABA(A) receptor subunit and gephyrin protein changes differ in the globus pallidus in Huntington's diseased brain.

Immunoreactivity of GABA(A) receptor subunits and the receptor anchoring protein gephyrin was investigated in the human globus pallidus using antibodies raised against the alpha(1) and gamma(2) subunits of the GABA(A) receptor complex and gephyrin. The results revealed increased GABA(A) receptor subunit immunoreactivity and unchanged levels of gephyrin immunoreactivity in Huntington's diseased (HD) globus pallidus (GP). The results demonstrate that gephyrin immunoreactivity did not change in unison with GABA(A) receptor changes in HD, suggesting that the receptor anchoring protein gephyrin is unaltered and maintains a stable lattice structure in the face of GABA(A) receptor changes in HD.