Overdoses Among Legal Opioid Users

Overdoses of opioid medicines don’t occur only among people who obtain the drugs illegally, a new study shows. People who are prescribed the drugs for pain also overdose, the study found. Researchers used pharmacy records on 9,940 adults who took opiods for at least 3 months in an 8-year period. The drugs were prescribed for long-term pain that was not related to cancer. They included hydrocodone and oxycodone. In all, 51 people overdosed. Six of the overdoses were fatal. People who were prescribed larger doses were more likely to overdose. For the highest doses, the overdose rate was 2% per year. Some overdoses were recorded as accidents or suicides. The cause of most was unclear. HealthDay and Reuters news services wrote about the study. It appeared January 19 in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.