TUESDAY, July 2, 2013 — Five-times as many women are dying from prescription painkillers than they were a decade ago. The number of women overdosing on opiate and other prescription painkillers has increased five-fold since 1999, according to a new report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
Researchers found that the number of women overdosing on prescription painkillers increased by more than 400 percent between 1999 and 2010, climbing from 1,287 to 6,631 -- 48,000 in total. Four times as many women died from painkiller overdoses as from cocaine and heroin combined during that period. For the year 2010 alone, the tragic consequence was that approximately 18 women died of drug overdoses every day in the United States.
Prescription painkillers are powerful but dangerous drugs, and more people than ever are becoming addicted, researchers said, and reversing the trend needs to be a top priority.
“Stopping this epidemic in women – and men – is everyone’s business. Doctors need to be cautious about prescribing and patients about using these drugs," said CDC Director Tom Frieden, MD, in a statement. Since 1999, the number of men overdosing on prescription painkillers increased by 265 percent.
Prescription painkillers like Oxycontin and Vicodin were cited by the CDC, and one of the main reasons is because doctors over-prescribe these medications, said Lauren Streicher, MD, Everyday Health columnist and associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.
“There’s a complacency about prescribing these drugs,” Dr. Streicher said. “It used to be that prescribing a narcotic was a big deal, but now it’s easy to get these drugs.”
Dr. Frieden agreed, saying that the increase in deaths is directly proportional to the increased number of prescriptions. While narcotics used to be reserved for chronic, debilitating pain, they are now frequently prescribed for all kinds of general pain, even when not warranted, he said.
"These are dangerous medications, and they should be reserved for instances such as severe cancer pain," Frieden said in a CDC conference call. "But in many other situations, the risks far outweigh the benefits. Prescribing opiates may be condemning a patient to life-long addiction."
Many women who are addicted to prescription painkillers will “doctor-shop,” Streicher said -- going to multiple doctors to get several prescriptions for their drugs.
“There’s this notion that with electronic medical records, doctors are all connected, but that’s not the case,” said Streicher. “I have no way of knowing if a patient of mine has been stockpiling drugs from other doctors. Sometimes it’s a pharmacist who catches it, but if she goes to different pharmacies, we have no way of knowing.”
And simply creating a network of medical records wouldn’t be enough, she added. “I think unifying EMR [electronic medical records] would help, but isn’t the perfect solution,” she said. “Many people are getting drugs from friends, family and on the street.”
Women also tend to self-medicate, Streicher said, which makes curbing the deadly trend even more difficult.
“We have more women who are self-treating, either because of lack of access to a doctor or because they consult Google instead of their doctor,” she said. “They take their husband’s Vicodin and of course it’s going to have a different effect in them than in their husband. An appropriate dose for a man is not the appropriate dose for a woman.”
Streicher stressed the importance of helping potentially suicidal women get the help they need, especially since 34 percent of all suicide attempts and deaths among women in 2010 were by drug overdose, compared to 8 percent of suicides among men.
“Women are far more likely to commit suicide with prescription drugs,” Streicher said. “The onus is on society to screen for depression and suicidal tendencies and make sure they don’t have the means to do so.”
She also called for more initiatives to educate the public about the dangers of prescription drugs, and said the CDC’s report is a good start.
“These statistics are going to open some eyes and help people realize the danger of these drugs,” she said. “Women need to know it’s not a good idea to abuse prescription drugs, self-medicate or mix drugs with alcohol."
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