ArticlePain2019
The contribution of obesity to prescription opioid use in the United States.
Article in Pain, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 55 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
55 citing papers in PubMed.
- Esketamine-led opioid-free anaesthesia reduces postoperative pulmonary complications in bariatric surgery patients: a prospective randomized controlled trial.BMC anesthesiology · 2026Trial
- Pain in People Living With Obesity: Baseline Multidimensional Profiles, Prevalence and Biopsychosocial Factors From a Cohort Study.European journal of pain (London, England) · 2026Article
- Fewer Opioid Pills After Orthopaedic Trauma Surgery Maintain Perceived Pain and Return-To-Work Self-Efficacy.Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. Global research & reviews · 2026Article
- Melanocortin receptor 4 agonist setmelanotide treats opioid-induced respiratory depression.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Addressing co-occurring chronic pain and obesity simultaneously in a behavioral intervention: a pilot trial.Pilot and feasibility studies · 2026Article
- Imminent opioid overdose risk prediction using classical and machine learning survival models following first recorded opioid-related diagnosis: a prospective cohort study from theThe American journal of drug and alcohol abuse · 2026Article
- Do patients with migraine and obesity receive different treatments? Insights from real-world data.Headache · 2026Article
- Effects of biopsychosocial complexity and pain-related factors on opioid prescription in patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain.Pain reports · 2025Article
- Eating a high fat/high carbohydrate diet enhances morphine tolerance, while eating a ketogenic diet mitigates morphine withdrawal in male rats.European journal of pharmacology · 2025Article
- The effects of high fat diet consumption on morphine-induced constipation.Behavioural pharmacology · 2025Article
- Predicting postoperative chronic opioid use with fair machine learning models integrating multi-modal data sources: a demonstration of ethical machine learning in healthcare.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2025Article
- Article
- Effects of sleeve gastrectomy and Roux-en-Y gastric bypass on the pharmacokinetics of gabapentin and pregabalin: A cohort study.PloS one · 2025Article
- Nonopioid analgesic use in older patients admitted for orthopedic rehabilitation.PM & R : the journal of injury, function, and rehabilitation · 2024Article
- Association of continuous BMI with health-related quality of life in the United States by age and sex.Obesity (Silver Spring, Md.) · 2024Article
- Normative high resolution esophageal manometry values in asymptomatic patients with obesity.Neurogastroenterology and motility · 2024Article
- Innovations in Pain Management for Abdominoplasty Patients: A Systematic Review.Journal of personalized medicine · 2024Review
- Chronic Low Back Pain Causal Risk Factors Identified by Mendelian Randomization: a Cross-Sectional Cohort Analysis.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2024Article
- The Effects of Eating a Traditional High Fat/High Carbohydrate or a Ketogenic Diet on Sensitivity of Female Rats to Morphine.The Journal of pharmacology and experimental therapeutics · 2024Article
- Analgesic prescribing in patients with inflammatory arthritis in England: observational studies in the Clinical Practice Research Datalink.Rheumatology (Oxford, England) · 2024Observational
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14 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The prevalence of obesity has grown rapidly over the past several decades and has been accompanied by an increase in the prevalence of chronic pain and prescription opioid use. Obesity, through its association with pain, may represent an important contributor to opioid use. This cross-sectional study investigated the relationship between obesity and prescription opioid use among adults aged 35 to 79 years using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES, 2003-2016). Relative to normal weight, body mass indices in the overweight {odds ratio (OR), 1.11 (confidence interval [CI], 0.88-1.39)}, obese I (OR, 1.26 [CI, 1.01-1.57]), obese II (OR, 1.69 [CI, 1.34-2.12]), and obese III (OR, 2.33 [CI, 1.76-3.08]) categories were associated with elevated odds of prescription opioid use. The association between excess weight and opioid use was stronger for chronic opioid use than for use with a duration of less than 90 days (P-value, <0.001). We estimated that 14% (CI, 9%-19%) of prescription opioid use at the population level was attributable to obesity, suggesting there might have been 1.5 million fewer opioid users per year under the hypothetical scenario where obese individuals were instead nonobese (CI, 0.9-2.0 million users). Back pain, joint pain, and muscle/nerve pain accounted for the largest differences in self-reported reasons for prescription opioid use across obesity status. Although interpretation is limited by the cross-sectional nature of the associations, our findings suggest that the obesity epidemic may be partially responsible for the high prevalence of prescription opioid use in the United States.
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Registered trials
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.