Do Half of Americans Really ‘Misuse’ Drugs?
/By Pat Anson, Editor
One of the nation’s largest drug testing companies has released a study claiming that over half of Americans who are prescribed medication show signs of drug misuse, including potentially dangerous drug combinations.
In 2016, Quest Diagnostics found that 52% of patient test results were “inconsistent” with their prescribed medications. That was an improvement over the rate found in 2011, when 63% of samples were inconsistent.
The Quest report, titled "Prescription Drug Misuse in America: Diagnostic Insights in the Growing Drug Epidemic," is based on an analysis of 3.4 million laboratory tests performed between 2011 and 2016.
Many of the specimen samples came from patients being treated in pain management and addiction treatment clinics, which are not representative of the population as a whole.
Like previous studies of its kind, Quest broadly defines what constitutes drug “misuse” – a misleading term many people associate with abuse, addiction and diversion. Nearly a quarter of the patients (23%) with inconsistent results had no drugs detected in their system, which simply means they were not taking medications as directed.
The other 77% tested positive for illegal drugs or for a medication they were not prescribed.
"Over the past several years, federal and state government, clinician organizations, public health advocates and providers have all launched campaigns to educate the public about the perils of prescription drug misuse, which hypothetically should have yielded a significant rate of improvement. Yet our study shows that every other American tested for possible inappropriate use of opioids and other prescription drugs is potentially at risk," said F. Leland McClure, PhD, director of medical affairs at Quest Diagnostics.
"This finding is rather shocking, and speaks to the challenges of combating the nation's drug misuse epidemic."
Are the results really all that shocking? Or were they ginned up to hype the so-called epidemic? Consider some of the reasons a patient may not take a drug or have an inconsistent test result:
- Patient didn't like side effects from a medication
- Pain or other symptoms have subsided, so medication is not needed
- Patient skipped a dose
- Patient cannot afford a medication
- Patient can’t find a pharmacy willing to fill their prescription
- Patient may be a “rapid metabolizer” of a medication
- Physician may not be aware another doctor prescribed a drug
- Inaccurate drug test
The latter is a very real problem in the drug testing industry. As PNN has reported, “point-of-care” urine tests widely used by pain management and addiction treatment doctors to screen patients for illicit drug use are wrong about half the time, often giving false positive or false negative results for drugs like marijuana, oxycodone and methadone.
The Quest study identified some disturbing and encouraging trends in drug use.
It wasn't opioids but benzodiazepines – a class of anti-anxiety medication that includes Xanax – that were most likely to be misused by adults over the age of 25. Marijuana was most likely to be misused by people aged 18 to 24. Opioids were second in both age groups.
Quest researchers found a striking decline in drug misuse among adolescents 10 to 17 years of age. The inconsistency rate for adolescents dropped from a whopping 70% in 2011 to 29% in 2016. Amphetamines and attention deficit disorder drugs were most likely to be abused by adolescents.
Among nearly 34,000 patient samples tested for opioids, alcohol and benzodiazepines, more than 20% were positive for opioids and benzodiazepines, 10% were positive for alcohol and opioids, and 3% were positive for all three. Any combination of these drugs raises the risk of respiratory depression and overdose.
Misuse rates were higher for men and women of reproductive age (58%) than in the general study population (52%). The findings are significant because opioid and benzodiazepine use may decrease male fertility and, if taken during pregnancy, increase the risk of birth defects and other health concerns.
Quest is one of several drug testing laboratories that have been fined millions of dollars for paying kickbacks to physicians and patients for medically unnecessary tests. Recent guidelines adopted by the American Society of Addiction Medicine warn doctors about ordering expensive drug tests that have led to “unethical and/or fraudulent activities.”
