The number of children and teens hospitalized for overdosing on prescription opioids increased by 165 percent from 1997 to 2012, according to a new study.
The study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, included a retrospective analysis of 13,052 hospital discharge records for patients in the United States aged 1 to 19 who were hospitalized for opioid poisonings. The results found that young children and older adolescents were most vulnerable to the risks of opioid exposure.
“Enough opioids are prescribed every year to put a bottle of painkillers in every household,” Julie Gaither, a postdoctoral fellow at Yale School of Public Health and the study’s lead author, told NPR. “They’re everywhere, and kids are getting into them.”
Researchers at Yale School of Medicine found that adolescents aged 15 to 19 had the highest opioid-related hospitalization rate. The rate of accidental overdose, poisonings attributed to suicide or self-inflicted injury, and methadone-related hospitalizations increased among this age group from 1997 to 2012.
Children aged 1 to 4 experienced the largest increase in prescription opioid overdoses from 1997 to 2012.
Heroin-related hospitalizations also increased among older adolescents. Poisonings involving heroin among individuals aged 15 to 19 rose from 0.96 per 100,000 teens in 1997 to 2.51 per 100,000 teens in 2012, an increase of 161 percent.
Children aged 5 to 9 accounted for the smallest proportion of prescription opioid poisonings, according to the study. Children aged 1 to 4 experienced the largest increase in prescription opioid overdoses from 1997 to 2012.
“The current public health crisis caused by prescription opioids is a systemic issue that affects individuals across the age spectrum,” the study’s authors concluded.
Prevention Tactics
Sharon Levy, associate professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, told NPR that opioid-related hospitalizations are largely viewed as an adolescent or adult issue. However, the study conducted by researchers at Yale School of Medicine shows that young children are also at risk.
“The opioid crisis affects everyone, and we need to pay better attention to the impact it’s had on children,” Gaither told CBS News. “Our study shows they have suffered hard from this epidemic.”
Young children who ingest opioids face short-term consequences, such as respiratory suppression or even death. Opioid use also can result in long term problems, such as addiction.
To prevent opioid misuse among children, Gaither said parents should limit access to these drugs in their households. Safely disposing of leftover prescription painkillers could also help, she said.
Her study explained that public health interventions, policy initiatives and consumer-product regulations could help reduce pediatric exposure to opioids.
Gaither said doctors must educate patients about ways to safely store drugs, which could prevent children from using these substances. However, Jonathan Chen, a physician at Stanford Medicine, told NPR that physicians aren’t always trained to consider how a patient’s medications affect other family members.
The study authors suggest that opioid poisonings are likely to remain a problem among children unless greater attention is concentrated to this community. Even the new national opioid prescribing guidelines by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention do not include recommendations for patients younger than age 18.
They authors said public health interventions, policy initiatives and consumer-product regulations could help reduce pediatric exposure to opioids.
Teen Opioid Misuse
Past-year use of prescription opioids among adolescents has decreased each year over the past five years, according to the 2015 Monitoring the Future national survey. Heroin use has also decreased during this time.
According to the survey, 5.4 percent of 12th graders reported past-year use of prescription opioids in 2015. The report found that 4.4 percent of high school seniors used Vicodin and 3.7 percent used OxyContin.
However, teen opioid use can lead to future misuse. A 2015 study published in the journal Pediatrics associated prescription opioid use before 12th grade with opioid misuse after high school. Individuals who used opioids as prescribed by a doctor by 12th grade were 33 percent more likely to misuse these drugs by age 23 than those with no history of opioid use.
“Our study identifies adolescent patients without a history of illegal drug use as a group of concern when prescribing opioids,” the report concluded. “These results underscore the call of prominent scholars to devote for more research to this group, which has received considerably less attention than patients who have or are suspected to have a history of drug misuse.”
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