A Scoping Review of Drug Epidemic Models

Abstract

The phenomenon of drug epidemics has been a global issue in the past decades, causing enormous damages to the physical and mental health of drug users and social well-being. Despite great efforts to curb drug epidemics at the governmental or social level, the total number of drug users has still been on the rise in recent years, along with illicit production and trafficking around the world. Inspired by dynamical epidemic models of infectious disease, a flourishment of promising results has been observed in the exploration of drug epidemic models. In this review, we aim to provide a scoping review of all existing drug epidemic modeling studies, and it has been shown that most studies focused on analyses of theoretical behaviors of the model systems, lacking emphasis on practical applications in real settings. We found that the drug epidemic models were characterized by a longer time scale, no incubation period, no significant prevention vaccines interfered, and population specificity. This review could assist policymakers and public health workers in gaining deeper insights into modeling tools, and help modelers improve their works, thus narrowing gaps between mathematical epidemiology and public health studies.

SNP-based and haplotype-based genome-wide association on drug dependence in Han Chinese

“…Drug abuse and drug dependence, characterized by the consumption of illicit drugs or narcotics and inappropriate use of prescription drugs, imparts heavy burdens on the safety and well-being of individuals and on human society [1]. The number of drug addicts has been increasing every year, and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reported that drug usage increased 30% globally from 2009 to 2018, with 35 million people fulfilling the criteria for a drug-use disorder in 2019 [2].…”