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Australia’s use of prescription opioid analgesics, akin to oxycodone, morphine, or tramadol, dropped by 21% between 2015 and 2022, regardless of a considerable improve in personal scripts in the identical interval, in accordance with new analysis revealed within the Worldwide Journal of Drug Coverage.
The downward development was pushed by a 33% discount in Pharmaceutical Advantages Scheme (PBS) meting out claims for opioid analgesics—primarily long-acting formulations—in mild of presidency measures to curb use.
However a couple of quarter of this discount was offset by a 55% soar in personal market use of opioids exterior of the PBS, say researchers from the Nationwide Drug & Alcohol Analysis Heart (NDARC) and the Medicines Intelligence Heart of Analysis Excellence, UNSW Sydney.
“While Australia has reduced its overall consumption of opioid analgesics, our findings indicate a significant rise in private prescriptions, which come with higher out-of-pocket costs for people in pain,” mentioned first writer and pharmacoepidemiologist, Kendal Chidwick.
“Reasons for the increase in private market use may include accessing opioids that are not subsidized under the PBS, or efforts to avoid the PBS restrictions altogether.”
In recent times, Australia has adopted a variety of measures to scale back opioid use—akin to introducing smaller pack sizes, restrictions on repeat scripts, and real-time prescription monitoring—with the purpose of halving opioid-related harms over the 5 years to 2025.
Authorities knowledge present that use of PBS-subsidized opioid analgesics has been declining since 2018; nonetheless, these statistics don’t seize personal scripts or medicines equipped to public hospital inpatients.
To get a clearer image of population-level tendencies in prescription opioid use, the researchers used knowledge from IQVIA Inc, which collects data on medication gross sales to pharmacies, hospitals and different well being care settings by pharmaceutical wholesalers and producers.
Senior writer and NDARC Analysis Director, Scientia Professor Louisa Degenhardt mentioned the examine supplies “critical information to support quality use of these prescription medicines and reduce patient harms.”
“Combining multiple data sources helped us to shine a light on trends in private dispensing of opioids, where the patient pays the full cost without subsidy—information that is not captured in standard PBS datasets,” Professor Degenhardt mentioned.
The evaluation can also be the primary to point out that tapentadol has changed oxycodone as probably the most generally prescribed opioid in Australia.
“Preferencing tapentadol for postoperative pain, due to perceived benefits, may be contributing to its increasing use despite limited evidence on the comparative safety of tapentadol and oxycodone post-surgery,” Chidwick mentioned.
However she added that the variety of Australians initiating PBS-subsidized tapentadol had been decreasing and “may stabilize as the market matures.”
A limitation of the examine was the reliance on medication gross sales data to gauge personal market use, which doesn’t point out particular person patterns of use.
Extra data:
Kendal Chidwick et al, Traits in prescription opioid analgesic use in Australia from 2015 to 2022, Worldwide Journal of Drug Coverage (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.drugpo.2024.104666
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Nationwide Drug and Alcohol Analysis Centre (NDARC)
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Drop in opioid use in Australia offset by spike in personal scripts (2024, December 10)
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