ArticleEuropean psychiatry : the journal of the Association of European Psychiatrists2021
Is Europe facing an opioid crisis like the United States? An analysis of opioid use and related adverse effects in 19 European countries between 2010 and 2018.
Article in European psychiatry : the journal of the Association of European Psychiatrists, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 65 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
65 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Characterizing discharge opioid prescription in postoperative neurosurgical patients: a systematic review.Neurosurgical review · 2024Pooled it
- Take-home naloxone in multicentre emergency settings: the TIME feasibility cluster RCT.Health technology assessment (Winchester, England) · 2024Trial
- Take-home naloxone administered in emergency settings: feasibility of intervention implementation in a cluster randomized trial.BMC emergency medicine · 2024Trial
- Patient navigation for pregnant individuals with opioid use disorder: Results of a randomized multi-site pilot trial.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2024Trial
- Mapping needles, reducing harm: Findings from a geospatial, community-based needle collection and naloxone training initiative in Saskatchewan, Canada.Harm reduction journal · 2026Article
- Regional Trends in the Opioid Epidemic Using Safety Signals of Drug Abuse and Dependence: A Disproportionality Analysis Using VigiBase.Drugs - real world outcomes · 2026Article
- Mechanistic Insights into G Protein-Biased κ-Opioid Receptor Signaling Using Dual-Charged Naltrexamine Amides.Journal of medicinal chemistry · 2026Article
- Changing trends in drug overdose mortality in Spain, 2001-2022.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2026Observational
- Assessing the disease burden of opioid use disorder in western europe: trends, gender differences, and future directions.Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archives of pharmacology · 2026Article
- Psychological vulnerability and opioid medication use disorder risk in chronic pain: the mediating role of affective states and gender differences.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Use of traditional, complementary and integrative medicine in Berlin: baseline results from a substudy of the German National Cohort (NAKO).BMJ public health · 2026Article
- Opioid analgesic use during pregnancy: a drug utilization cohort study in Catalonia.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2026Article
- Who are we reaching? Identifying subgroups among individuals seeking help for opioid use disorder.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- Social justice with harm reduction approaches for mothers who use opioids: an international comparative ethnographic study with community engaged methods.Harm reduction journal · 2025Article
- Low-level laser therapy in osteoarthritic pain: A narrative review with an approach to integrated clinical use.Osteoarthritis and cartilage open · 2025Review
- Trends in opioid prescribing in Scandinavian countries from 2010 to 2023: Insights from multi-metric evaluation.British journal of clinical pharmacology · 2025Article
- Review
- Population-based multistate modelling of peritraumatic opioid use among trauma patients from the Norwegian Trauma Registry.British journal of anaesthesia · 2025Article
- Reconstructing Cross-Cultural Meanings of Addiction Among Women from Three Countries.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2025Article
- Clinical Characteristics and Outcomes of Patients With Rome IV Functional Dyspepsia Who Consume Opioids: A Real-World Study.Neurogastroenterology and motility · 2025Article
5 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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5 authors.
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Abstract
backgroundGiven the ongoing opioid crisis in the United States (US), we investigated the opioid situation in Europe. The aims of the study are to provide an overview of trends in prescription opioid (PO) use and opioid-related adversities between 2010 and 2018 for different opioids in 19 European countries and to present a comparison with similar data from the US.
methodsA multisource database study with national data from 19 European countries evaluating trends between 2010 and 2018 in (a) PO consumption, (b) high-risk (HR) opioid users, (c) opioid-related hospital admissions, (d) opioid-related overdose deaths, (e) opioid use disorder treatment entries, and (f) patients in opioid substitution therapy (OST). Within and between-country comparisons and comparisons with data from the US were made.
resultsThere was considerable variation between European countries. Most countries showed increased PO consumption with the largest increase and the highest consumption in the United Kingdom (UK) compared to the rest of Europe and the US in 2018 (UK: 58,088 defined daily doses for statistical purposes/1000 population/day). In 2018, Scotland had the highest rates (per 100,000 population) of HR opioid users (16·2), opioid-related hospital admissions (118), opioid-related deaths (22·7), opioid use disorder treatment admissions (190), and OST patients (555) of all included European countries. These rates were similar or even higher than those in the US in 2018. Other countries with high rates of opioid-related adversities were Northern Ireland (synthetic and "other" opioids), Ireland (heroin and methadone), and England (all opioids). All other countries had no or little increase in opioid-related adversities.
conclusionsApart from the British Isles and especially Scotland, there is no indication of an opioid crisis comparable to that in the US in the 19 European countries that were part of this study. More research is needed to identify drivers and develop interventions to stop the emerging opioid crisis in the UK and Ireland.
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