This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
One in four patients concurrently use opioids, benzodiazepines
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Research published in the Journal of Addiction Medicine indicated concurrent use of opioids and benzodiazepines among approximately 25% of patients who were prescribed at least one drug and tested for both.
According to an accompanying press release, concurrent use of these drugs can lead to respiratory suppression, cardiac distress and death.
“Concurrent use of opioids and benzodiazepines has been on clinicians’ radar screens for a few years, based on the increase in opioid prescriptions, the increase in prescription overdoses and opioid-related deaths, and the concern that both opioids and benzodiazepines depress the central nervous system and respiration,” Harvey W. Kaufman, MD, study researcher and senior medical director for Quest Diagnostics, Madison, N.J., told Healio Family Medicine. “But we haven’t fully understood the breadth of concurrent use.”
To gather more data on simultaneous use of both drugs, researchers culled prescription and urine drug testing data from a drug-monitoring database.
Overall, 231,228 samples from 144,535 patients prescribed at least one drug and tested for both benzodiazepines and opioids were analyzed.
According to results, 25.8% of patients were using benzodiazepines and opioids at the same time. In 52% of these patients, only one of the drugs was prescribed. Nineteen percent of patients with positive test results for prescribed opioids also had positive test results for nonprescribed benzodiazepines, and 15.9% of specimens with prescribed benzodiazepines also demonstrated nonprescribed opioid use.
Kaufman stressed the seriousness of these findings. “These data suggest the majority of this prescription drug combining is occurring without the benefit of clinical oversight,” he said. “That means the risk of serious side effect, including death, is much higher than previously thought.”
“The clinical takeaway should be caution and vigilance,” Kaufman added. “Physicians who are prescribing either of these medications should be alert to the possibility of abuse and misuse. Drug testing can help health care providers ensure that their patients are taking medications as directed and not taking other drugs that can interfere and cause harm.” – by Janel Miller
Disclosures: Kaufman reports being an employee of Quest Diagnostics. Please see the study for all other authors’ relevant financial disclosures.