Psychiatric News (4/29) reports, “People who use prescription opioid” analgesics “along with the so-called Z-drugs (zolpidem, zopiclone, and zaleplon) for insomnia have a significantly higher risk of overdose than people who use opioids alone,” researchers concluded after using “the IBM Marketscan Commercial and Medicare Supplemental Database” to analyze “data on patients 15 to 85 years of age who had filled an opioid prescription between January 1, 2004, and December 31, 2017,” then comparing “510,529 patients within this group who also began taking Z-drugs with an equal number of patients who were taking opioids alone.” The findings were published online April 26 in the American Journal of Psychiatry, a publication of the American Psychiatric Association
Related Links:
— “Psychiatric News, Psychiatric News, April 29, 2021