ArticlePloS one2020
Estimating the impact of drug use on US mortality, 1999-2016.
Article in PloS one, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 40 papers.
What it found
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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.
The trial behind it
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
40 citing papers in PubMed, 119 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Primary Prevention Interventions for Problematic Substance Use in Adolescents: A Scoping Review.Journal of prevention (2022) · 2026Review
- Prevalence and factors associated with substance use among adolescent girls and young women working in artisanal and small-scale gold mining communities of Uganda: a cross-sectional exploratory study.Substance abuse treatment, prevention, and policy · 2026Article
- Insights into US life expectancy stagnation from birth cohort mortality dynamics.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Understanding changes to life expectancy and inequalities in the UK, Germany, and other high-income countries.Bundesgesundheitsblatt, Gesundheitsforschung, Gesundheitsschutz · 2025Review
- Pervasive stagnation: flat and increasing cardiovascular disease mortality rates after 2010 across US states and counties.American journal of epidemiology · 2025Article
- Spatially Continuous Maps of Disease Risk: An Analysis of Mortality Disparities in the United States.AJPM focus · 2025Article
- Role of Cardiovascular Deaths on Changes in the Longevity Gap Between U.S. and Other Countries.American journal of preventive medicine · 2025Observational
- The Role of Despair in Predicting Self-Destructive Behaviors.Population research and policy review · 2025Article
- Midlife diseases of despair and cardiometabolic risk: testing shared origins in adolescent psychopathology.Psychological medicine · 2024Article
- Cost-effectiveness of drug consumption rooms in France: a modelling study.BMC public health · 2024Article
- Reevaluating the "deaths of despair" narrative: Racial/ethnic heterogeneity in the trend of psychological distress-related death.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Article
- Art therapy's engagement of brain networks for enduring recovery from addiction.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Article
- Trends in cause-specific mortality: deaths of despair in Spain, 1980-2019.Journal of public health (Oxford, England) · 2023Article
- Article
- Years of life lost to drug overdose in the Latinx community during the most recent wave of overdose deaths.The American journal on addictions · 2023Article
- Rethinking headache as a global public health case model for reaching the SDG 3 HEALTH by 2030.The journal of headache and pain · 2023Review
- Addressing nutrition and physical activity in substance use disorder treatment: Client reports from a wellness-oriented, tobacco-free policy intervention.Drug and alcohol dependence reports · 2023Article
- Peer support and online cognitive behavioural therapy for substance use concerns: protocol for a randomised controlled trial.BMJ open · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
The impact of rising drug use on US mortality may extend beyond deaths coded as drug-related to include excess mortality from other causes affected by drug use. Here, we estimate the full extent of drug-associated mortality. We use annual death rates for 1999-2016 by state, sex, five-year age group, and cause of death to model the relationship between drug-coded mortality-which serves as an indicator of the population-level prevalence of drug use-and mortality from other causes. Among residents aged 15-64 living in the 50 US states, the estimated number of drug-associated deaths in 2016 (141,695) was 2.2 times the number of drug-coded deaths (63,000). Adverse trends since 2010 in midlife mortality are largely attributable to drug-associated mortality. In the absence of drug use, we estimate that the probability of dying between ages 15 and 65 would have continued to decline after 2010 among men (to 15% in 2016) and would have remained at a low level (10%) among women. Our results suggest that an additional 3.9% of men and 1.8% of women died between ages 15 and 65 in 2016 because of drug use. In terms of life expectancy beyond age 15, we estimate that drug use cost men 1.4 years and women 0.7 years, on average. In the hardest-hit state (West Virginia), drug use cost men 3.6 and women 1.9 life years. Recent declines in US life expectancy have been blamed largely on the drug epidemic. Consistent with that inference, our results imply that, in the absence of drug use, life expectancy at age 15 would have increased slightly between 2014 and 2016. Drug-associated mortality in the US is roughly double that implied by drug-coded deaths alone. The drug epidemic is exacting a heavy cost to American lives, not only from overdoses but from a variety of causes.
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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.