Patients Prefer To Keep Leftover Opioid Painkillers With Themselves: Study

A new study has found that patients who are prescribed opioid painkillers tend to keep the left over pills. On the other hand, some people also end up sharing those pills with their friends or acquaintances.

These are the findings of a study conducted by a team of researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health. According to the study, more than 50 percent of the patients prescribed with opioid painkillers have or are expected to have the left over dose. In addition, one-fifth of such patients share the pills with their family members of friends.

The study findings have come amidst the opioid drug overdose epidemic in the United States. Circulation of prescription painkillers is one of the major problems in the country and the deaths from drug overdose have only increased in the recent years.

According to lead study author Alene Kennedy-Hendricks, although the awareness about an increased prescription of opioid drugs is increasing in the country, it would still take some time for the medical community to change. The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data suggest that more than 29,000 people died in 2014 because of opioid overdose.

The researchers based their conclusion on the answers given by around 1,000 patients who were prescribed with the opioid drugs. Doctors started to prescribe opioid painkillers, including the time-released version of oxycodone by Purdue Pharma, in the 1990s. The painkillers were originally marketed claiming that it is difficult to abuse them because of the time release seal.

However, it was later found to be untrue and the pharmaceutical company had to pay $600m in fine for making false claims.

The complete details of the study have been published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.