ArticleDrugs - real world outcomes2023
Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Patterns of Prescription Opioid Use: A Retrospective Cohort Study of Adults Without a Cancer Diagnosis Initiating Opioids Using Administrative Claims Data.
Article in Drugs - real world outcomes, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Editorial: Opioids in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic: from cellular mechanisms to public health policy.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has led to disruptions of healthcare delivery and may thus have impacted patterns of prescription opioid use, including risk factors for long-term use.
objectiveWe aimed to describe changes in patterns of prescription opioid use due to the COVID-19 pandemic in community-dwelling adults without a cancer diagnosis.
methodsUsing administrative claims data of the province of Quebec, Canada, a random sample of adults (aged ≥18 years) was selected. These were members of the public drug plan without a cancer diagnosis who initiated a prescription opioid in the outpatient setting between 1 January, 2018 and 28 December, 2020. We assessed the daily dose of initial prescription opioids, the number of days' supply of initial dispensing, and the total duration of opioid use over the first 6 months following initiation. We applied interrupted autoregressive integrated moving average models to examine weekly patterns of prescription opioids before and during the pandemic (starting at the lockdown). Our models included a step intervention function (immediate change) and a ramp intervention function (slope change).
resultsThere were 112,650 and 34,261 patients who initiated opioid therapy, respectively, in the 115-week pre-pandemic period and in the 41-week pandemic period. At the start of the lockdown, there was a significant immediate decrease in opioid treatment initiation (-326; 95% confidence interval [CI] -419 to -234) and initial daily dose (-1.7 morphine milligram equivalents; 95% CI -2.7 to -0.7). Conversely, there was a significant immediate increase in the number of days' supply of initial dispensing (1.4 days; 95% CI 1.0 to 1.8) and the total duration of opioid use over 6 months (5.7 days; 95% CI 4.6 to 6.8). All these weekly measures returned to values close to those of the pre-pandemic period 10 weeks after the start of lockdown.
conclusionsOur findings showed that the COVID-19 lockdown had an impact on initial number of days' supply, which is a risk factor for long-term use and ultimately opioid-related harm. However, over time, prescription practices and use reverted to those observed in the pre-pandemic period.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.