Health Brief

PRESCRIPTION DRUG DEATHS SKYROCKET 68 PERCENT OVER
FIVE YEARS AS AMERICANS SWALLOW MORE PILLS

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Poisoning from prescription drugs has risen to become the second-largest cause of unintentional deaths in the United States, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Researchers found that deaths from prescription drugs rose from 4.4 per 100,000 people in 1999 to 7.1 per 100,000 in 2004, a 68 percent increase. And deaths attributed to psychotherapeutic drugs, like antidepressants and sedatives, rose nearly 200 percent, from 671 deaths to 1,300.
The total deaths from pharmaceuticals rose from 11,000 to almost 20,000 people in the span of just five years. Among the 20,000 that died, more than 8,500 — double the number from 1999 — were from “other and unspecified drugs.”

The largest increase was among teenagers and young adults, people aged 15 to 24, which the CDC says relates to recreational use of prescription drugs and a jump in cocaine use.
However, all other age groups except the elderly (over age 75) saw increases of more than 35 percent on a per-100,000 scale in prescription drug deaths, including a nearly 90 percent jump for the late Baby Boomer generation (ages 45 to 54) and a more than 90 percent increase for people aged 55 to 64.

The report data did not allow suicides to be separated from other drug deaths, meaning there may be inherent errors because it was impossible to tell after death the intent or reason for a person’s death from prescription drugs.

“Some of these deaths might have been suicides, although not classified as such, and some deaths categorized as suicides or of undetermined intent might have been unintentional, and, therefore, not analyzed in this study. The extent of this error is not known,” the report states.

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SOURCE: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5605a1.htm