New CDC Overdose Study Reduces Role of Pain Meds
/By Pat Anson, Editor
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has quietly released a new report showing that illegal drugs like heroin, cocaine and fentanyl are responsible for more drug overdose deaths in the United States than opioid pain medication.
The report not only underscores the changing nature of the nation’s overdose epidemic, but undermines some of the rationale behind federal efforts to limit the prescribing of pain medication and public statements used to justify them.
In 2010, for example, the study found that oxycodone was the top drug involved in overdose deaths. But by 2014, the painkiller was ranked third, behind heroin and cocaine.
The anti-anxiety drug alprazolam, more widely known by the brand name Xanax, was ranked as the nation’s fourth deadliest drug; while the synthetic opioid fentanyl -- most of it probably illicit -- was ranked fifth and fast gaining ground.
Deaths linked to oxycodone and other prescription pain medications – although still significant, at about 16,000 a year -- remained relatively stable, even as the total number of drug overdoses increased by 23 percent, from 38,329 deaths in 2010 to 47,055 in 2014.
One of the CDC’s stated reasons for releasing its opioid prescribing guidelines earlier this year was that “the death rate associated with opioid pain medication has increased markedly,” a statement that now appears to be factually wrong, in light of the new study.
This online statement in a CDC analysis of overdoses also appears incorrect: "Prescription opioids continue to be involved in more overdose deaths than any other drug."
Both statements came from the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. It was a different part of the agency, the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics that arrived at this new evidence, after collaborating with the FDA in developing an enhanced method to study overdose deaths that allowed them to identify specific drugs.
The old method used by the CDC relies on death certificate codes, known as ICD codes, which can broadly categorize an overdose as “opioid related” without ever determining what the drug was, if it was legal, or even if it was the cause of death.
Using new software, researchers scanned the actual text in hundreds of thousands of death certificates, including notes written by coroners about the cause of death and other significant factors involved in an overdose.
“The literal text analysis method… leverages existing information on the death certificates for statistical monitoring of drug-involved mortality deaths. Assessments conducted during the methods development process demonstrate that these methods have high accuracy in identifying the drugs mentioned and involved in mortality as well as the corresponding deaths,” the researchers said in an analysis of the new method.
2014 OVERDOSE DEATHS BY DRUG
The study, which covered overdoses from 2010 to 2014, found that many deaths involved multiple drugs or alcohol. Over three-quarters of the deaths involving oxycodone and hydrocodone, for example, involved other substances. Alcohol was involved in 15 percent of all drug overdoses.
Anti-anxiety drugs like alprazolam (Xanax) and diazepam (Valium) were also involved in many deaths. Alprazolam was involved in about a quarter of the overdoses involving hydrocodone (26%), oxycodone (23%) and methadone (18%). The FDA recently expanded warning labels on all opioids and benzodiazepines, including alprazolam and diazepam, to discourage doctors from prescribing them together.
“The combinations of drugs in drug overdose deaths are important to consider when interpreting the study findings. Importantly, the most frequently mentioned drugs involved in drug overdose deaths were often mentioned with each other. For example, heroin and cocaine were involved concomitantly in more than 2,000 deaths. Another pair, oxycodone and alprazolam, were involved concomitantly in more than 1,000 deaths,” the report found.
While the textual analysis of death certificates is an improvement over previous methods, researchers admit it still has flaws. It cannot distinguish between prescription fentanyl and illicit fentanyl; some deaths that refer to morphine may actually involve heroin; and some deaths classified as “unintentional” may have actually been suicides.
It also cannot distinguish between the recreational use of a medication obtained illicitly and the medical use of a prescription by a legitimate patient.
Many pain sufferers believe they have been unfairly penalized by the CDC’s opioid prescribing guidelines as part of an effort to keep pain medication away from addicts and recreational users. Since the guidelines were released, many physicians have stopped prescribing opioids or sharply reduced the dosage, even if a patient has safely used the medication for years.
Oddly, the CDC released this new study just a week after releasing its annual report on drug overdose deaths, which used the older, flawed method of analyzing overdoses. Further adding to the confusion and questionable use of statistics, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and the CDC released three different estimates of the number of Americans that died of drug overdoses in 2015 (see “Opioid Overdose Statistics: As Clear as Mud”).
