Women in the US are dying from prescription drug overdose at record rates: a new study found that this death rate has increased five-fold in the last decade, and the CDC now calls this a growing public health epidemic.
“Mothers, wives, sisters and daughters are dying at rates that
we have never seen before,” said Centers of Disease Control
and Prevention director Dr. Thomas Frieden, who led a study
analyzing the extent of prescription drug overdose.
The study found that men are still more likely to die of
overdoses than women, but the number of female deaths spiked
drastically. Eighteen women currently die from prescription drug
overdose each day. From 1999 to 2010, the rate of overdose
fatalities among women increased by 400 percent, leading to
15,300 deaths in 2010. Among men the rate increased by 250
percent.
By 2010, 40 percent of all overdose deaths were women, most of
them middle-aged who took prescription painkillers. The CDC found
that women ages 45 to 54 were most likely to ingest a fatal dose
of prescription drugs, followed closely by women ages 55 to 64.
“Unfortunately, women are catching up in this regard,”
Frieden told reporters during a conference call.
Researchers believe that 70 percent of overdose deaths were
unintentional. About 12 percent of overdose deaths were labeled
as suicides.
The study’s authors hypothesized that women are more likely than
men to be prescribed painkillers, use them chronically, and
acquire prescriptions for higher doses — in part because women
are more susceptible to chronic pain such as fibromyalgia, a
condition of widespread pain throughout the body.
Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug
Abuse, told the New York Times that women are also more likely to
be given psychotherapeutic drugs to treat depression and anxiety,
which could interfere with other medications and sometimes lead
to death.
Women typically also have smaller body masses than men, making
them more susceptible to overdose. They are also more likely to
“doctor shop” and acquire pain pills from multiple physicians,
CDC officials told AP. The CDC report particularly focused on
prescription opioids like Vicodin, OxyContin, and Opana.
“These are dangerous medications and they should be reserved
for situations like severe cancer pain,” Frieden said. “In
many other situations, the risks far outweigh the benefits.
Prescribing an opiate may be condemning a patient to lifelong
addiction and life-threatening complications.”
Drug overdoses now kill more US women than car accidents,
cervical cancer or homicide, and Frieden believes doctors should
consider the possibility of addiction and think of alternative
treatments for chronic pain before prescribing opioids.
“Stopping this epidemic in women — and men — is everyone’s
business,” Frieden said in a statement. “Doctors need to
be cautious about prescribing and patients about using these
drugs.”
Republished with permission from: RT