Responsible : Dr. Roberta Pacifici
phone : (+39) 06 4990 2909
mail : roberta.pacifici@iss.it
Center activities
The National addiction and doping center promotes a multidisciplinary and integrated vision to deal with the complex phenomenon of substance addiction, behavioral addiction, and doping. Addictions to substances such as tobacco, alcohol, drugs, including new psychoactive substances and behavioral addictions, such as gambling, food, the internet and new technologies, and doping are important public health risk factors.
The National addiction and doping center works to combat and prevent addictions, contributing to the knowledge from an epidemiological point of view, to the optimization of diagnostic-therapeutic paths and to the improvement of socio-educational interventions, through specific research sectors, control, supervision, information, training and consultancy.
The activities of the National addiction and doping center are designed on the basis of scientific evidence to translate knowledge into effective and appropriate public health interventions. The Center also facilitates the meeting between the demand of citizens and the offer of services in the area, and through the counseling activity of the Help lines on addictions (smoking, alcohol, gambling, drugs) and doping.
Thanks to the research activities of the Analytical pharmacotoxicology operational unit, the Center identifies indicators of use, abuse and passive exposure to narcotic and psychotropic substances, including nicotine and alcohol, and offers support for improving the quality of performance of the laboratories of pharmacotoxicology of the National Health Service (SSN).
The Center promotes the development of national networks of social and health resources and participates as a national reference center in the European network Early warning system on new psychoactive substances. Finally, it houses the World Health Organization Center (WHO) for the research and promotion of health on alcohol and alcohol-related problems.
Organization of the center
The activities of the National addiction and doping center are carried out involving all human resources. The internal structure of the Center includes contacts who work in close synergy for each thematic area such as doping, tobacco, new tobacco products and electronic cigarettes, alcohol, gambling, drugs, eating disorders, the Internet and new technologies.
For more info: observatorio.fad@iss.it ; servizio.telefoni@iss.it
Analytical pharmacotoxicology operational unit
Director: Dr. Simona Pichini
phone : (+39) 06 4990 6545
mail : simona.pichini@iss.it
The Analytical pharmacotoxicology unit deals with developing and validating analysis methodologies and monitoring pharmacologically active substances (e.g. substances of abuse, doping agents, biomarkers of alcohol consumption) in non-biological matrices (e.g. pharmaceutical products, food supplements, cosmetic products and material subject to seizure by law enforcement agencies) and in conventional and unconventional biological matrices for clinical and forensic research purposes. It also studies the pharmacokinetics and toxicokinetics of drugs, substances of abuse and doping agents in conventional and unconventional biological matrices for clinical and medico-legal purposes. The Unit laboratory is equipped with the latest high resolution analytical instruments.
