ArticleJournal of addiction medicine
Escalating Opioid Dose Is Associated With Mortality: A Comparison of Patients With and Without Opioid Use Disorder.
Article in Journal of addiction medicine. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Opioid use and the risk of cancer incidence and mortality: a systematic review.Cancer metastasis reviews · 2025Pooled it
- Advances in prescription drug monitoring program research: a literature synthesis (June 2018 to December 2019).Current opinion in psychiatry · 2020Pooled it
- Opioid biomarkers in urine as reliable and valid correlates of opium use characteristics: A 10-year longitudinal assessment.Drug and alcohol dependence reports · 2025Article
- Buprenorphine Substitution as a Tapering Strategy for Opioid Discontinuation in Patients with Chronic Pain: A Nonrandomized and Proof of Concept Study.Pain and therapy · 2025Article
- Combination of Cannabidiol and Low-Dose Buprenorphine Suggests Synergistic Analgesia and Attenuates Buprenorphine-Induced Respiratory Depression.Cannabis and cannabinoid research · 2025Article
- Impact of 30-day prescribed opioid dose trajectory on fatal overdose risk: A population-based, statewide cohort study.Journal of general internal medicine · 2024Article
- Trends in Israeli community-based opioid prescribing, 2010-2020, an observational study of the country's largest HMO.Israel journal of health policy research · 2023Observational
- The Effect of Modifiable Risk Factors on Postoperative Complications in Lumbar Spine Fusions.Global spine journal · 2023Article
- Patching holes in the mechanism of opioid tolerance.Trends in pharmacological sciences · 2023Article
- Relationship Between Cardiovascular Disease Pathology and Fatal Opioid and Other Sedative Overdose: A Post-Mortem Investigation and Pilot Study.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2021Article
- Impact of opioid dose escalation on the development of substance use disorders, accidents, self-inflicted injuries, opioid overdoses and alcohol and non-opioid drug-related overdoses: a retrospective cohort study.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2020Article
- Temporal Factors Associated With Opioid Prescriptions for Patients With Pain Conditions in an Urban Emergency Department.JAMA network open · 2020Article
- Improving Access to Evidence-Based Medical Treatment for Opioid Use Disorder: Strategies to Address Key Barriers within the Treatment System.NAM perspectives · 2020Review
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9 authors.
Funding
Abstract
objectivePrescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs) are intended to help reduce prescription drug misuse and opioid overdose, yet little is known about the longitudinal patterns of opioid prescribing that may be associated with mortality. This study investigated longitudinal opioid prescribing patterns among patients with opioid use disorder (OUD) and without OUD in relation to mortality using PDMP data.
methodsGrowth modeling was used to examine opioid prescription data from the California PDMP for a 4-year period before death or a comparable period ending in 2014 for those remaining from a sample of 7728 patients (2576 with OUD, and 5152 matched non-OUD controls) treated in a large healthcare system.
resultsCompared to controls, individuals with OUD (alive and deceased) had received significantly more opioid prescriptions, greater number of days' supply, and steeper increases of opioid dosages over time. For morphine equivalents (ME, in grams), the interaction of OUD and mortality was significant at both intercept (β = 10.4, SE = 4.4, P < 0.05) and slope (β = 6.0, SE = 1.1, P < 0.001); deceased OUD patients demonstrated the sharpest increase (ie, an average yearly increment of 7.84 grams over alive patients without OUD) and ended with the highest level of opioids prescribed before they died (ie, 20.2 grams higher). Older age, public health insurance, cancer, and chronic pain were associated with higher number and dose of opioid prescriptions.
conclusionsBesides the amount of prescriptions, clinicians must be alert to patterns of opioid prescription such as escalating dosage as critical warning signals for heightened mortality risks, particularly among patients with OUD.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.