Studies: Opioid epidemic grows; Is obesity a smoking gun in rise of prescription drugs?

January 13th, 2016 by Julie Ferguson

You may have taken hope from studies that pointed to a decrease or leveling of the rate of deaths related to opioid and prescription drug use in 2012-2013. If so, the Centers for Disease Control wasted no time this year in throwing some cold water on those hopes.

On January 1, via the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), the CDC issued new data on Increases in Drug and Opioid Overdose Deaths — United States, 2000–2014.

                      Age-adjusted rate of drug overdose deaths and drug overdose deaths involving opioids: US 2000–2014

mmwr opioid trends

Here are some of the key findings:

  • During 2014, a total of 47,055 drug overdose deaths occurred in the United States, representing a 1-year increase of 6.5%, from 13.8 per 100,000 persons in 2013 to 14.7 per 100,000 persons in 2014.
  • Rates of opioid overdose deaths also increased significantly, from 7.9 per 100,000 in 2013 to 9.0 per 100,000 in 2014, a 14% increase.
  • In 2014, there were approximately one and a half times more drug overdose deaths in the United States than deaths from motor vehicle crashes
  • The 2014 data demonstrate that the United States’ opioid overdose epidemic includes two distinct but interrelated trends: a 15-year increase in overdose deaths involving prescription opioid pain relievers and a recent surge in illicit opioid overdose deaths, driven largely by heroin.
  • From 2000 to 2014 nearly half a million persons in the United States have died from drug overdoses.
  • The rate of deaths from drug overdoses has increased 137%, including a 200% increase in the rate of overdose deaths involving opioids (opioid pain relievers and heroin).

The 2013-2014 increase was geographically pervasive. In 2014, the five states with the highest rates of drug overdose deaths were:

  • West Virginia (35.5 deaths per 100,000)
  • New Mexico (27.3)
  • New Hampshire (26.2)
  • Kentucky (24.7)
  • Ohio (24.6).

States with statistically significant increases in the rate of drug overdose deaths from 2013 to 2014 included Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

For more analysis of the data, see Kim Krisberg’s story at The Pump Handle.

Obesity: A Smoking Gun?

Is obesity a contributing factor to the opioid epidemic? That’s certainly an avenue worth further investigation. Recent research shows more evidence of the increase in prescription drug use and study authors suggest an obesity connection.

In November, researchers at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health issued a report which was published in in JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association: Trends in Prescription Drug Use Among Adults in the United States From 1999-2012

NPR’s Alison Kodjak reports on the study in Americans Are Using More Prescription Drugs; Is Obesity To Blame?

Two of the key findings:

  • 59% of adults used a prescription drug in a 30-day period, up from 50% a decade earlier.
  • The share of people taking more than five prescription drugs in a month doubled to 15%.

Lead author Elizabeth Kantor said that:

” … the rise in prescription drug use may have to do with the rise in obesity, since many of the most widely prescribed drugs treat obesity-related conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. The study found, for example, that the share of people using cholesterol-lowering agents, mostly statins, jumped from 7% to 17%.”

 

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