Prescriptions for benzodiazepines, drugs like Valium and Xanax, increased by over 30 percent between 1996 and 2013. What was disturbing to researchers was the number of deaths from overdose using these drugs, described as a public health problem that has “gone under the radar.”
In 2014, Digital Journal reported on studies that detailed the over-medication of benzodiazepines in the elderly that not only led to an increase in falls but to overdoses. The new study suggests people are now taking them in “riskier ways,” leading to overdoses.
Researchers had hoped that the data from national health surveys between 1996 and 2013 would show that as people became more aware of the dangers of taking opioids and other mood-altering drugs, the number of prescriptions would reach a plateau or even decrease.
“Going into this study, we thought that prescribing would be steady or decline in the late 2000s as people became more aware of opioids so there might be more attention” to benzodiazepines, said lead author Dr. Marcus A. Bachhuber, assistant professor of medicine at Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
What the researchers found was that prescriptions for drugs such as Xanax, Valium, Ativan, Klonopin or other drugs in this class actually doubled over the time period studied. The data also showed that fully 56 percent of the drugs were used for treating anxiety.
It was not clear to the team whether the medications are being over-prescribed or if it is a case of more people going to the doctor complaining of insomnia and mood disorders, and benzodiazepines are just the “go-to” medication most prescribed.
Figures in the study say the largest increase in deaths from overdose with “benzos,” a common name used for the drugs, occurred in people between the ages of 18 nd 64. However, seeing that the rise in overdoses outpaced the rise in prescriptions suggests “people have been taking them in a riskier way over time,” says Bachhuber, according to CNN.
“It could be that people were taking higher doses of medication — which could be reflected in the increase in the amount of medication per prescription — or they could be combining it with other medications, illegal drugs or alcohol,” he said.
And based on the ages of those taking the medications for anxiety, especially the younger ones, it is possible they are mixing these drugs with alcohol or other substances. The one thing the study didn’t really go into detail about was the number of elderly who had overdosed with benzos during the time period studied.
A recent study published in 2015 showed that 75 percent of benzodiazepine overdose deaths were found to also involve opioid use.
The study, “Increasing Benzodiazepine Prescriptions and Overdose Mortality in the United States, 1996–2013,” was published in the American Journal of Public Health on February 18, 2016.
