The number of U.S. fatal overdoses fell last year.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. SpellBound, an Ann Arbor-based augmented reality company, has received a $1.8 million fast track grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to study opioid use in pediatric cancer patients. The study will measure the effects of SpellBounds augmented reality scavenger hunt, ARISE, on the length of hospital stay and opioid use by pediatric cancer patients after surgery. She stated that studies have found relationships between movement, recovery milestones and a reduction of overall pain but getting pediatric patients to move is a challenge for clinicians. The fast track grant allows SpellBound to accelerate the study by combining phase 1 and phase 2 trials to test feasibility and perform clinical trials. York added that the research grant will allow SpellBound to provide support resources for research hospitals in the study, hire more engineers and evolve ARISE.

Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesBOSTON - The rates of eighth, 10th and 12th graders who use e-cigarettes continued to rise this year and doubled from 2017 to 2019, according to research released Wednesday. "Current efforts by the vaping industry, government agencies, and schools have thus far proved insufficient to stop the rapid spread of nicotine vaping among adolescents," researchers wrote. Seven deaths so farThis week, a California man became the seventh person to die from a vaping-related illness in the US. Vaping-related illness recently killed another person in California, plus one person each in Kansas, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota and Oregon, officials have reported. Researchers are now looking into 280 cases of lung illness associated with the use of e-cigarettes in 36 states and the US Virgin Island, they have said.