Opioid crisis cuts U.S. life expectancy

Opioid crisis trims U.S. life expectancy

The opioid crisis is rippling through the U.S. healthcare system, causing a spike in rates of hepatitis C related to increased opioid injections and reducing overall life expectancy among Americans, which has fallen for the second year in a row, U.S. health officials said.

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Heroin, an illegal opioid that is typically injected, accounted for around 15,500 deaths, and prescription painkillers were involved in about 14,500, the CDC reported.

“These are not simply numbers - these are actual lives,” said Benjamin F. Miller, chief policy officer of Well Being Trust, a non-profit foundation focused on mental health issues. “Seeing the loss of life at this dramatic rate calls for more immediate action.”

President Donald Trump in October declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency, which senior administration officials said would redirect federal resources and loosen regulations to combat abuse of the drugs. However, he stopped short of declaring a national emergency, a move he had promised months before and which would have freed up more federal money.

Overdose rates rose in 40 states and in Washington, D.C., between 2015 and 2016, with 17 states seeing increases of 25 percent or more, according to the TFAH analysis.

“Every community has been impacted by this crisis,” Auerbach said, adding that the government was not making the investments needed to “turn the tide.”

The surge in overdose deaths has depressed recent gains in U.S. life expectancy, which fell to an average age of 78.6, down 0.1 year from 2015 and marking the first two-year drop since 1962-1963.

In a separate report, the CDC linked the recent steep increases in hepatitis C infections to increases in opioid injection.

Researchers used a national database that tracks substance abuse admissions to treatment facilities in all 50 U.S. states. They found a 133 percent increase in acute hepatitis C cases that coincided with a 93 percent increase in admissions for opioid injection between 2004 to 2014.

“Hepatitis C is a deadly, common, and often invisible result of America’s opioid crisis,” said Dr. Jonathan Mermin, director of CDC’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention. Mermin urged testing people who inject drugs for hepatitis C infection to prevent new transmissions.

As the opioid epidemic has worsened, many state attorneys general have sued makers of these drugs as they investigate whether manufacturers and distributors engaged in unlawful marketing behavior.

Reuters, Inc.