Age and generational patterns of overdose death risk from opioids and other drugs.

ABSTRACT: The ongoing substance misuse epidemic in the United States is complex and dynamic and should be approached as such in the development and evaluation of policy¹. Drug overdose deaths (largely attributable to opioid misuse) in the United States have grown exponentially for almost four decades, but the mechanisms of this growth are poorly understood². From analysis of 661,565 overdose deaths from 1999 to 2017, we show that the age-specific drug overdose mortality curve for each birth-year cohort rises and falls according to a Gaussian-shaped curve. The ascending portion of each successive birth-year cohort mortality curve is accelerated compared with that of all preceding birth-year cohorts. This acceleration can be attributed to either of two distinct processes: a stabl

SUBMITTER: Jalal H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8086189 | biostudies-literature | 2020 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature