Pharmacoepidemiology and Addiction—2nd Edition

Dear Colleagues,

Substance use remains a significant public health concern worldwide. Pharmacoepidemiologic studies are a critical component in mitigating adverse outcomes across the addiction spectrum. Understanding trends in drug use, particularly the detection of novel psychoactive substances, provides opportunities for prevention and intervention. As the landscape of substance use changes, there is a need to develop pharmacologic treatments that not only treat withdrawals, craving of and addiction to specific drugs, but address the use of multiple classes of substances, known as polysubstance use. The widespread prevalence of comorbid conditions among those with substance use disorders, such as chronic pain and mental health disorders, are often associated with substandard treatment outcomes such as retention and relapse. As such, it is crucial to develop models of multidisciplinary addiction medicine and understand the role that pharmacology may play in addressing comorbid conditions alongside substance use disorders. Finally, pharmacologic interventions can play an important role in mitigating serious adverse events, including overdose fatalities.

This Special Issue aims to update the current or shifting trends in substance use, the identification of novel psychoactive substances, the development of novel pharmacologic treatments for mono- or polysubstance use, outcome research for currently established pharmacologic treatments of addiction, the integration of pharmacologic treatments for comorbid conditions into addiction medicine and the development of pharmacologic interventions for drug overdose or other adverse outcomes. This issue will accept original research articles, review articles, commentaries, letters or other materials facilitating the understanding of addiction through pharmacoepidemiology.

Dr. Matthew Ellis
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Pharmacoepidemiology is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.