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New research confirms the growing dangers posed by the abuse of prescription painkillers and calls on clinicians to help prevent future cases of addiction and overdose.
In 2006, 295 people died of accidental overdoses. Of these, an estimated 67.1 percent were men. 63.1 percent of them used painkillers including methadone, OxyContin and Vicodin, which they did not have a prescription for and 21.5 percent had prescriptions from at least five separate doctors.
“Drug overdoses in the U.S. are the second-leading cause of unintended deaths behind motor vehicle deaths,” Aron Hall of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in a joint telephone interview with Leonard Paulozzi, MD, MPH, also of the CDC.
Researchers targeted West Virginia for the study because it has the highest rate of accidental drug overdose deaths across the country – as well as the nation’s fastest rising overdose rate, said Hall. Mortality rates from overdoses in West Virginia increased by 550 percent from 1999 to 2004.
The study did not track where those people who overdosed, had obtained their drugs. It did, however, conclude that the majority of people using prescription painkillers to get high are getting their drugs for free from friends and family members.
Pain medications are prescribed nationwide at staggering rates. Legal methadone purchases have increased 13-fold over the last ten years, while OxyContin prescriptions are up nine-fold.
The sheer number of prescription pain medications written by doctors and filled by pharmacists daily is a majority of the problem, said Hall. He encourages doctors and pharmacists to counsel patients prescribed opiates about the potential risk of overdose – for both themselves and to those whom they sell or share their pills with.
The study titled, Patterns of Abuse Among Unintentional Pharmaceutical Overdose Fatalities, is published in the December 10 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. #