March 2021 - Opioid safety: striking the right balance

In this podcast, James Cave (Editor-in-Chief) and David Phizackerley (Deputy Editor) review the March issue of DTB (https://dtb.bmj.com/content/59/3). The editorial discusses a national safety alert that highlighted the risk of dependence associated with prolonged use of opioids for non-cancer pain and a proposal that all opioid medicines in the UK carry the warning "can cause addiction" (https://dtb.bmj.com/content/59/3/34). The editors talk about an article on the rationale and science behind bisphosphonate holidays (https://dtb.bmj.com/content/59/3/35). The main article explores the risk of nitrosamine contamination in medicines (https://dtb.bmj.com/content/59/3/39) and the case report is of a patient who developed an unusually impressive atorvastatin-induced elevation of serum alkaline phosphatase (https://dtb.bmj.com/content/59/3/43). Please subscribe to the DTB podcast to get episodes automatically downloaded to your mobile device and computer. Also, please consider leaving us a review or a comment on the DTB Podcast iTunes podcast page (https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/dtb-podcast/id307773309). Thank you for listening. Also, DTB is running a short survey to find out what people think of our content. Please visit https://dtb.bmj.com to find a link to the survey.