The Detroit Free Press (5/8, Kovanis) reports on a study published in the JAMA Psychiatry which found that buprenorphine treatment is prescribed 35 times more frequently to white patients. The article says that the findings are “especially interesting because research revealed earlier this year showed a spike in the number of African American deaths tied to fentanyl, the ultra powerful opioid that’s being cut into heroin, cocaine and other drugs.”
The Philadelphia Inquirer (5/8, Whelan) reports that the study examined over 13 million doctors’ visits during which the drug was prescribed from 2012 through 2015, and “found that 12.7 million of those visits were by white patients, compared to just 363,000 for all other races.”
HealthDay (5/8, Preidt) reports that investigators found “a large increase in the overall number of buprenorphine prescriptions written at outpatient clinic visits over the previous decade, but a decrease in the percentage of those visits where the patients were black.”
Related Links:
— “Poor, Minorities Shortchanged on Opioid Addiction Treatments, ” Robert Preidt, HealthDay, May , 2019