Financial troubles, chronic pain, substance abuse and mental illness are common factors among people who died recently after overdosing on prescription drugs in Utah, health researchers said Monday.
Of more than 2,000 deaths reviewed by the state medical examiner's office between October 2008 and October 2009, 430 were drug overdoses. More than half involved only legal painkilling narcotics known as opioids.
Utah Department of Health officials are trying to understand why prescription-drug overdose deaths have jumped more than 500 percent over the last decade or so. Utah residents are now more likely to die from drug overdose than in a traffic accident.
"Very little is known about why we are experiencing this epidemic of prescription drug deaths in Utah," Dr. David Sundwall, director of the health department, said. "The ultimate goal is to prevent as many of these deaths as we can."
Death records offer only a few biographical clues about those who died. Health investigators went looking for more details about what factors might predispose someone to those deaths.
Researchers over the fall and winter interviewed relatives and friends of 385 people who overdosed on prescription drugs during that time. Of those, 63 percent were unemployed when they died, and 59 percent were having financial problems. About a quarter also lacked health insurance when they died.
About 83 percent suffered from chronic pain.
The study also found half had been treated for substance abuse and about half also had been diagnosed with a mental illness.
Oxycodone was the drug most frequently mentioned as a contributing cause of death, health officials said.
"We've known this is not a simple problem to solve. I think we now know a little bit more about where to aim," Dr. Robert Rolfs, Utah's state epidemiologist, said Monday.
It will require educating not only doctors and patients but also patients' family, said Rolfs, noting that many interviewed in the study had concerns about how the prescriptions were being used.
The results released Monday could help health officials develop materials for physicians to consult prior to prescribing pain medications, Rolfs said. In some cases, it might mean doctors need to take longer with patients to determine their risks for overdosing and look for a less-dangerous alternative, Rolfs said.
Utah has long grappled with its steadily growing number of overdoses. Prescription pain medication overdoses killed 39 people in 1999. In 2008 — the latest year with figures available — 277 died. Of those, 82 percent were related to pain medications.
A recent U.S. Health and Human Services survey ranked Utah fourth in the nation for non-medical use of pain relievers.
State health officials said many of the state's deaths could be avoided if medications were taken as prescribed. In 2008, they launched a campaign called "Use Only as Directed" to educate residents, doctors, pharmacists and insurers about the potential dangers of prescription drugs.
There's also concern about unused medications falling into the wrong hands. More than 70 percent of respondents to a Utah health survey said that, a year after being prescribed opioids, they still had some left, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last month. Of those people, 2.3 percent said they'd given the meds to someone else.
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On the Net:
Utah Department of Health, http://health.utah.gov/