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Increase in Babies Born Addicted to Opiates Due in Part to Rise in Prescription Drug Abuse
An increase in the number of babies born addicted to opiates is likely impacted in part by the rise in abuse of prescription pain drugs, according to the authors of a recent medical study. Researchers concluded that the number of newborns with neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) due to maternal opiate use, tripled between 2000 and 2009, from one in 1,000 newborns with NAS to at least three in 1,000 newborns. The lead researcher on the study, Stephen Patrick, MD, indicated that opiate use by mothers has increased during this time period, and is not limited to illicit drugs. Patrick correlated this increase in opiate use by mothers with the rise in sales of and deaths related to prescription opiate painkillers between 1999 and 2008. A summary of the study is available from MedPage Today. The full article, “Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome and Associated Health Care Expenditures: United States, 2000-2009,” was published in the April 30, 2012, issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.
