By Pat Anson, Editor

The number of Americans who died from opioid overdoses – particularly from heroin – is significantly higher than previously reported, according to a new study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Researchers at the University of Virginia refined the overdose data from 2014 death certificates and estimated that overdose death rates nationally were 24 percent higher for opioids and 22 percent higher for heroin. Deaths involving heroin were substantially underreported in Pennsylvania, Indiana, New Jersey, Louisiana, and Alabama.

A major weakness of the study is that it does not differentiate between opioid pain medication that was prescribed legally, and prescription opioids or illegal opioids that were obtained illicitly. All “opioids” are lumped together in one category.

Virtually every study about drug overdoses is flawed in some way, because each state has different rules and procedures for death certificates. The expertise of county coroners and medical examiners can also vary widely.

There were over 47,000 fatal overdoses nationwide among U.S. residents in 2014. However, about one-quarter of the death certificates failed to note the specific drug involved in an overdose.

“A crucial step to developing policy to combat the fatal drug epidemic is to have a clear understanding of geographic differences in heroin and opioid-related mortality rates. The information obtained directly from death certificates understates these rates because the drugs involved in the deaths are often not specified," said lead author Christopher Ruhm, PhD, Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, University of Virginia, Charlottesville.

Ruhm and his colleagues developed a more refined database that supplemented the death certificate data with additional geographic information from states and counties. The supplemental data had a substantial influence on state mortality rankings.   

For example, the opioid and heroin death rates in Pennsylvania, based solely on death certificates, were 8.5 and 3.9 deaths per 100,000 people, respectively. The corrected data doubled the death rates in Pennsylvania to 17.8 for opioids and 8.1 and for heroin.

“Geographic disparities in drug poisoning deaths are substantial and a correct assessment of them is almost certainly a prerequisite for designing policies to address the fatal drug epidemic,” said Ruhm.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has also tried to refine the data from death certificates to make it more reliable.  A CDC study released last December used new software to scan the actual text of death certificates, including notes left by coroners. That study found that heroin, cocaine, fentanyl and anti-anxiety medication (benzodiazepines) were responsible for more overdose deaths in the United States than opioid pain medication.

A more reliable way to determine the cause of an overdose is through toxicology reports, which some states are now utilizing to better assess their drug problems. Pennsylvania recently found that fentanyl was involved in over half of its overdoses, followed by heroin, cocaine and anti-anxiety medications such as Xanax and Valium.  Opioid pain medication was ranked as the fifth most deadly drug. Toxicology reports have also determined that fentanyl is involved in over half the drug overdoses in Massachusetts.