Higher prescribed doses of opioids may increase overdose risk.
Bloomberg News (1/19, Tirrell) reports that a paper published in the Annals of Internal Medicine reveals that "more doctors are prescribing oxycodone, morphine, and other opioid painkillers for back pain, arthritis, and headache." According to an accompanying editorial, written by A. Thomas McLellan, PhD, of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, "opioids are the most commonly prescribed class of medication in the US, with use of some such as methadone, increasing as much as 800 percent in the last 10 years." Aiming to understand the ramifications of that trend, researchers at the Seattle-based Group Health Research Institute "looked at pharmacy files for adults with chronic pain who had been given at least three opioid prescriptions over three months."
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