Alert! Nature sub-magazine reports that drug abuse and addiction are getting younger!

May 23, 2020 /
PRNewswire
BIOON /--It's no secret how much of a person's year of birth has played a role in the growing global problem of drug addiction? researchers at the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public Healthshow that the age of a person born - the silent generation, the baby boomers, the X-generation or the millennial generation - strongly predicts the likelihood of dying from a drug overdose and what age they will dieThe results were published in the recent journal Nature Medicinephoto source: Jalal et al(2020) Nature Medicine
"Sociological imprint marks a person's birth at a specific time," said senior author DrDonald Burke, president of population health at Jonas Salk and honorary dean of the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health"It reflects what they're going through in adolescence and their attitudes toward medication -- attitudes that will be with them for the rest of their lives"
so far, the study of drug use demographics has focused more on age and found that middle age is at the greatest risk of drug-related death, but Burke and colleagues have found that the year a person is born also has a big impactIn the study, DrHawre Jalal, an assistant professor of health policy and management at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health, analyzed 661,565 overdose deaths recorded by the CDC between 1979 and 2017, and charted mortality rates, ages, and birth years or timesdata clearly show that the prevalence of overdoses is popping up among baby boomers, turning young among Gen Xers and then soaring to new heights among millennialsWith the prevalence of prescription opioids and fentanyl, these stages correspond to previously determined drug fluctuationslooking at each generation, Jalal and his colleagues found that in each year of continuous birth, the risk of overdose increased steadily at a younger age, which surprised them quite a bit "There's no reason for these lines to fan out like this," Jalal said For example, if you look at breast cancer or any other mortality curve, they are not like that Jalal said it was not clear why this happened, but the pattern was too clear to be considered accidental Although there was an overall increase in drug overdose deaths against the backdrop of these data, this does not explain the results of the study year after year, the death curve of drug overdoses extends to young people Burke borrowed an analogy from infectious diseases to explain the gradual shift in drug overdose deaths to younger age Photo Source: Jalal et al (2020) Nature Medicine
"This is an epidemic Like infectious diseases, it's a spread," said Burke, who is also a professor of epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh's Department of Public Health "In this case, it spreads from the elderly to the young Burke hopes that the highly regular model found in the analysis will provide policymakers with a tool to test whether their measures to curb drug overdose deaths are effective in the long run - and that any effective intervention should break that pattern (Bio ValleyBioon.com) References: 1, Drug siphone is is the singu dyed from old to young, study show 2) Age and dypatterns of the family of the family from the risk s and other drugs
, nature (2020) DOI: 10.1038/s41591-020-0855-y