Opioids killed more than 49,000 people in the U.S. in 2017, and a new study shows which states have been most affected by the ongoing epidemic, according to www.cnn.com.
The study, which recently was published in the journal JAMA Network Open, looked at opioid deaths from 1999 to 2016 and found the mortality rate from synthetic opioids in 28 states more than doubled every two years during that time. At the national level, opioids were responsible for shaving 0.36 years off Americans' life expectancy in 2016—reportedly a greater loss of life than caused by guns or motor vehicle accidents.
Washington, D.C., experienced the greatest increase in its opioid mortality rate, which more than tripled every year since 2013. New Hampshire and West Virginia saw the biggest drops in life expectancy—of more than a year—because of opioid deaths.
Montana and Oregon were the only states that experienced a decline in opioid deaths from 1999 to 2016.
Researchers used data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics and the U.S. census to identify 351,630 opioid-related deaths from 1999 to 2016. During that 18-year period, deaths from opioids increased by 455 percent. On average, men died at age 39.8, and women died at age 43.5.
Mathew Kiang, a postdoctoral research fellow at Stanford University's Center for Population Health Sciences, was involved with the study and says the number of opioid deaths likely is underreported because synthetic opioids require additional testing by a medical examiner.
Dr. Andrew Kolodny, the co-director of the Opioid Policy Research Collaborative at Brandeis University, believes the opioid crisis should be viewed not as an overdose epidemic but as an addiction epidemic.
"Preventing opioid addiction is necessary for the long term, so that this crisis ultimately comes to an end," Kolodny says. "And preventing opioid addiction really means much more cautious prescribing."
