Nonmedical use of Opioids among adults decreases but death rate increases in

According to a new study, it has been found out that the number of people reporting the misuse of prescription opioid has considerably between the year 2003 and 2013, however disorders and overdose of the opioids increased in the United States between the same time period.

Senior author Dr. Beth Han of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration in Rockville, Maryland, says the findings underline the importance of having an open dialogue about the prescription opioid crisis, which began during the 2000s with the rise in use of high-intensity opioids.

To investigate prevalence and related risk factors, they looked at data from 472,200 participants in the 2003-2013 National Surveys on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH).

“We found a significant decrease in the percentage of nonmedical use of prescription opioids, as well as significant increases in the prevalence of prescription opioid use disorders, high-frequency use, and related mortality among adults aged 18 through 64 years in the United States over the past decade”. At the same time, use disorders rose from 0.6 percent to 0.9 percent and the length of time people reported abusing opioids increased, with more people indicating their misuse lasted more than 200 days increased.

Objective To assess national trends in and characteristics of nonmedical prescription opioid use and use disorders and the national trend in related mortality. An editorial accompanying the study notes that the findings “suggest that more patients are experiencing an inexorable progression from initial opioid use to frequent use, highly frequent use, or an opioid use disorder”.

They wrote that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently granted a sum of $20 million to 16 states to study safe prescribing practices and decrease the availability of prescription opioids.

The study performed by SAMHSA, discovered that deaths from drug overdose involving prescription opioids raised 3.3 percent per 100,000 people, according to National Vital Statistics.

Effective training programs are needed to help doctors identify and treat high-risk nonmedical users of prescription opioids, she said. Patients with opioid-related disorders and associated substance use disorders – plus nicotine dependence and depression – should be screened for treatment.

For its part, SAHMSA has created an Opioid Overdose Prevention Toolkit. “This hasn’t changed, despite the growing and more complicated problem of opioid abuse and dependence”.

These numbers can climb down when inappropriate prescription of opioids is reduced, and we use as well as develop new treatments for pain which are safer.

“Not everybody is going to want or need the same treatment”, said Brendan Saloner of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, who coauthored the research letter.

People with dependences on alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, hallucinogens, heroin, stimulants, sedatives and nicotine were also more prone to disorders – as were those who stole or bought drugs, compared with those who received them for free from friends or relatives.