Ameritox in the News

• April 5, 2012
  Ameritox invests in depression blood test with Ridge licensing deal (Clinica)
  

  From Clinica: Pain medication monitoring specialist Ameritox is branding out into depression after signing a deal that will allow it to sell Ridge Diagnostics’ blood test for major depressive disorder, MDDScore, to primary care and pain physicians. Ridge claims the product is the first clinically-available blood test for depression — albeit to a very limited market for now — and CEO Lonna Williams told Clinica the company hasn’t “seen anything else on the horizon.”

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  Also, read the press release from Ameritox.com: Ridge Diagnostics, Inc. and Ameritox Ltd. Enter Into Licensing Agreement for Depression Biomarker Blood Test

  
  

  Tagged with: ameritox, depression, MDDScore, Ridge Diagnostics

  
  
• March 15, 2012
  Dr. Leider on Ameritox’s Support of New Expert Consensus Panel (Pain Live)
  

  From Pain Live: Harry L. Leider, MD, MBA, FACPE, Chief Medical Officer and Senior Vice President, Ameritox medication monitoring solutions, discusses Ameritox’s support of a consensus panel that looked at the use of urine drug monitoring.

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• February 9, 2012
  Six Points for Physicians on Identifying and Preventing Chronic Pain Medication Abuse (Becker’s Orthopedic, Spine & Pain Management)
  

  From Becker’s Orthopedic, Spine & Pain Management Review: Patients being treated for chronic pain stray from their opioid regimen, voluntarily or involuntarily, for several reasons. In some cases, patients want to remain adherent to their regimen but become addicted to the opioids accidentally. “Sometimes patients get in trouble and they can’t help abusing,” says Harry Leider, MD, an internist and chief medical officer for Ameritox, a company focused on medication monitoring solutions. “At that point, drug monitoring programs are really about patient safety and education.”

  Other patients choose not to adhere to their treatment pathway, either by taking too many on purpose or taking too few and illegally selling or giving away the surplus. There are several implications of inappropriate opioid use that weigh heavily on patients and society. Dr. Leider discusses how physicians can detect diversion and help keep opioid users safe.

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• December 7, 2011
  Pharmaceutical Commerce: Ameritox proposes ongoing monitoring for pain patients, with a validated comparative database
  

  From Pharmaceutical Commerce: There are many companies involved in drug testing for employees, professional athletes or law enforcement procedures, but there are relatively few that come at the topic from a healthcare perspective. One of these, Ameritox (Baltimore) has developed a pain medication monitoring system that goes well beyond testing the presence of narcotics (both prescribed and illicit); the company is offering its Rx Guardian system to pain specialists as a method of keeping patients on therapy—both in cases of overdosing, and cases where patients who should be at a certain dosage level are not (possibly because they are diverting pain pills into the street market).

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  Tagged with: pain medication monitoring, research, rx guardian, rx guardian cd, urine drug monitoring

  
  
• December 2, 2011
  Report reveals startling increase in painkiller overdose deaths (Risk & Insurance)
  

  From Risk & Insurance: The latest statistics are further evidence of the need to address the growing problem of opioid abuse in the workers’ comp system, including monitoring patients.

  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports nearly 15,000 deaths from overdoses of powerful painkillers in 2008 — more than three times the number less than 10 years before. The drugs include many prescribed for injured workers, including OxyContin — the number one prescribed drug in workers’ comp, according to the latest research from NCCI.

  “We find 35 percent of our samples in workers’ comp don’t contain the drug the physician says is being prescribed,” said Mitch Freeman, vice president of workers’ comp sales for Ameritox, a drug monitoring company. “That’s a huge discrepancy between what is perceived to be taken and what is [taken]. Additionally, almost 25 percent [of the tests] contain a narcotic that the treating physician is not indicating are being prescribed.”
   

  >Read the full story

  
  

  Tagged with: ameritox, opioid abuse, workers compensation