Key takeaways:
- Opioid overdose deaths amongst youth aged 15 to 24 years rose 52% from 2018 to 2022.
- One-third of overdose deaths in 2022 have been attributable to artificial opioids alone.
Opioid overdose deaths continued to rise amongst adolescents and younger adults throughout a current 5-year interval, and artificial opioids alone have gotten the predominant trigger, in line with findings printed in Pediatrics.
The CDC reported earlier this yr that drug overdose deaths within the U.S. declined 26.9% total from 2023 to 2024 and projected that 2024 would see the bottom variety of deadly overdoses in a single yr since 2019. Nevertheless, deadly overdose charges amongst adolescents are nonetheless considerably greater than earlier than the pandemic, in line with a report by KFF. In the course of the pandemic, KFF reported that teen overdose deaths doubled from 282 in 2019 to 546 in 2020, peaked in 2022 with 721, then decreased barely in 2023 to 708.
Knowledge derived from Miller M, et al. Pediatrics. 2025;doi:10.1542/peds.10.1542/peds.2024-069488.
“We all know that youth overdose deaths have stayed alarmingly excessive lately, with notable variations throughout sociodemographic teams,” Megan Miller, MPH, analysis coordinator NYU Langone’s Heart for Opioid Epidemiology and Coverage, advised Healio. “In contrast to prior research which have examined youth polydrug overdoses, we analyzed mutually unique drug combos to determine the precise medicine famous to be contributing to overdose.”
Miller and colleagues analyzed knowledge from the Nationwide Heart for Well being Statistics about overdose deaths amongst youth aged 15 to 24 years from 2018 by 2022. They separated the deaths by drug sort, together with artificial opioids alone or opioids mixed with benzodiazepines, cocaine, heroin, pure/semisynthetic opioids and psychostimulants aside from cocaine. They checked out tendencies over time amongst completely different demographic teams.
Youth overdose deaths rose from 4,652 in 2018 to six,723 in 2022, with a peak in 2021, the researchers reported. Over the 5-year interval, the speed of all opioid overdoses elevated 52% (8.46 deaths per 100,000 to 12.86 per 100,000) and the speed of deaths related to artificial opioids doubled (6.17 per 100,000 to 12.25 per 100,000).
Miller and colleagues famous that 95% of opioid deaths in 2022 have been related to artificial opioids, and one-third concerned artificial opioids alone. In actual fact, overdose deaths attributable to artificial opioids alone jumped from 1.59 per 100,000 in 2018 to 4.26 per 100,000 in 2022 — a 168% enhance, in line with the authors.
Overdose deaths occurred extra regularly amongst younger adults aged 20 to 24 in contrast with youth aged 15 to 19 years, however charges rose a lot sooner among the many youthful group over the examine interval.
“Deadly overdose charges involving solely artificial opioids, akin to fentanyl, have been constantly highest throughout all 5 years, no matter age, intercourse, race and ethnicity or area,” Miller mentioned. “This implies that many counterfeit drugs taken by youth might not simply be contaminated with artificial opioids, however reasonably they might comprise completely artificial opioids.”
Deaths attributable to artificial opioids mixed with different medicine additionally elevated over the examine interval, apart from artificial opioids and heroin, which was the second commonest explanation for overdose demise in 2018 however fell 85% by 2022 to the turn out to be least frequent trigger amongst these studied.
Along with rising charges of overdose deaths, nonfatal opioid overdoses are additionally rising amongst kids and teenagers, and analysis from final fall reported that naloxone prescriptions for youth rose greater than 600%.
“Our findings clarify that pediatricians want to acknowledge the dangers of artificial opioid publicity amongst youth,” Miller mentioned. “Pediatricians must be ready to coach younger sufferers and households concerning the dangers of fentanyl, advocate for the distribution of harm-reduction instruments like naloxone and fentanyl check strips, and assist coverage modifications that increase entry to youth-tailored habit therapy and prevention packages.”
References:
For extra info:
Megan Miller, MPH, might be reached at megan.miller@nyulangone.org.
