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Analysis of Death Records Shows Growing Disparities in Opioid Epidemic
Posted on by Lawrence Tabak, D.D.S., Ph.D.
Based on the most recent data, about 100,000 people now die in the United States from drug overdoses over the course of a year, about half of them from synthetic opioids and primarily fentanyl [1,2]. That’s more than a 30 percent increase over 2019 levels, and a reminder that the exact causes of these tragic overdoses continue to evolve over time, including from changes in how people use drugs.
Now, an NIH-funded study provides a detailed look at one shift in drug use: overdose deaths involving some combination of opioids and stimulant drugs, including cocaine and methamphetamine. These latest findings on the nation’s opioid epidemic, from a thorough analysis of death certificate data over a decade and up to the start of the pandemic, showed an alarming rise in overdose deaths from combined opioids and stimulants in all parts of the country.
The data also reveal extremely troubling racial disparities. Opioid/stimulant deaths among Black Americans have risen at more than three times the rate seen among non-Hispanic white people, especially in Eastern states. In other parts of the country, there’s also been a disproportionate increase in these combination overdose deaths among Hispanic and Asian Americans.
The findings, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, suggest that efforts to prevent opioid overdoses, including wide distribution of naloxone, should target not only people who primarily use opioids but those who primarily use crack cocaine or other street drugs [3].
The new study comes from a team led by Tarlise Townsend, NYU Langone Center for Opioid Epidemiology and Policy, New York, and David Kline, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC. They wanted to dig deeper into the increase in combined stimulant/opioid overdose deaths observed over the last decade.
To do so, the researchers analyzed individual death certificate data for overdoses from the 2007-2019 National Center for Health Statistics. They grouped them by state as well as by race and ethnicity (non-Hispanic white, non-Hispanic Black, Hispanic, and non-Hispanic Asian American/Pacific Islander). They also analyzed separately deaths from opioids in combination with cocaine and those involving methamphetamine and other stimulants (MOS).
These national data showed that cocaine/opioid mortality increased 575 percent among Black people compared to 184 percent in white people. The pattern for methamphetamines and other stimulants combined with opioids showed an even starker and truly terrible pattern. MOS/opioid mortality rose by 16,200 percent in Black people versus 3,200 percent in white people.
The study uncovered some other noteworthy regional trends from 2007-2019, including:
• By 2019, rates of cocaine/opioid mortality in Black Americans were considerably higher than among white Americans in 47 of the 50 states.
• The largest disparity between Black Americans and white Americans was found in MOS/opioid mortality in the Midwest.
• MOS/opioid death rates among Black Americans increased 66 percent per year in the Northeast, 72 percent per year in the Midwest, and 57 percent in the South.
• In the South, deaths from cocaine and opioids grew 26 percent per year in Black Americans, 27 percent per year in Hispanic people, and 12 percent per year in non-Hispanic white people.
• MOS/opioid death rates among Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders increased faster than in white people in the West and Northeast.
• MOS/opioid death rates also grew faster among Hispanic people than among white people in the West, Northeast, and upper Midwest.
The results show that the nature of overdose deaths vary considerably from state to state and even within the same region of the country. More study, however, is needed to understand fully the observed trends and their causes.
For instance, it’s not clear how often such opioid/stimulant deaths stem from intentional use of these drugs in combination versus growing contamination of stimulant drugs, such as cocaine, with synthetic fentanyl, which is the extremely potent and dangerous opioid that’s largely responsible for the recent uptick in stimulant/opioid overdose deaths.
As researchers work to get these answers, this study comes as a reminder that successfully tackling the opioid epidemic through NIH’s Helping to End Addiction Long-term (HEAL) Initiative and other efforts will require a multi-pronged approach, including concerted efforts to improve prevention and treatment for opioid misuse and addiction. It also will be essential to ensure that such advances will reach those who are being hit hardest by the opioid epidemic, including minority and marginalized communities.
References:
[1] 12 month-ending provisional number of drug overdose deaths. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. January 1, 2022.
[2] Drug overdose deaths. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. March 3, 2021.
[3] Racial/ethnic and geographic trends in combined stimulant/opioid overdoses, 2007-2019. Townsend T, Kline D, Rivera-Aguirre A, Bunting AM, Mauro PM, Marshall BDL, Martins SS, Cerda M. American Journal of Epidemiology. 7 Feb 2022.
Links:
Drug Topics (National Institute on Drug Abuse/NIH)
Opioid Overdose Crisis (NIDA)
Helping to End Addiction Long-term (HEAL) Initiative (NIH)
Tarlise Townsend (NYU Langone, New York)
David Kline (Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC)
NIH Support: National Institute on Drug Abuse
A Race-Free Approach to Diagnosing Chronic Kidney Disease
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
Race has a long and tortured history in America. Though great strides have been made through the work of leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to build an equal and just society for all, we still have more work to do, as race continues to factor into American life where it shouldn’t. A medical case in point is a common diagnostic tool for chronic kidney disease (CKD), a condition that affects one in seven American adults and causes a gradual weakening of the kidneys that, for some, will lead to renal failure.
The diagnostic tool is a medical algorithm called estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR). It involves getting a blood test that measures how well the kidneys filter out a common waste product from the blood and adding in other personal factors to score how well a person’s kidneys are working. Among those factors is whether a person is Black. However, race is a complicated construct that incorporates components that go well beyond biological and genetic factors to social and cultural issues. The concern is that by lumping together Black people, the algorithm lacks diagnostic precision for individuals and could contribute to racial disparities in healthcare delivery—or even runs the risk of reifying race in a way that suggests more biological significance than it deserves.
That’s why I was pleased recently to see the results of two NIH-supported studies published in The New England Journal of Medicine that suggest a way to take race out of the kidney disease equation [1, 2]. The approach involves a new equation that swaps out one blood test for another and doesn’t ask about race.
For a variety of reasons, including socioeconomic issues and access to healthcare, CKD disproportionately affects the Black community. In fact, Blacks with the condition are also almost four times more likely than whites to develop kidney failure. That’s why Blacks with CKD must visit their doctors regularly to monitor their kidney function, and often that visit involves eGFR.
The blood test used in eGFR measures creatinine, a waste product produced from muscle. For about the past 20 years, a few points have been automatically added to the score of African Americans, based on data showing that adults who identify as Black, on average, have a higher baseline level of circulating creatinine. But adjusting the score upward toward normal function runs the risk of making the kidneys seem a bit healthier than they really are and delaying life-preserving dialysis or getting on a transplant list.
A team led by Chi-yuan Hsu, University of California, San Francisco, took a closer look at the current eGFR calculations. The researchers used long-term data from the Chronic Renal Insufficiency Cohort (CRIC) Study, an NIH-supported prospective, observational study of nearly 4,000 racially and ethnically diverse patients with CKD in the U.S. The study design specified that about 40 percent of its participants should identify as Black.
To look for race-free ways to measure kidney function, the researchers randomly selected more than 1,400 of the study’s participants to undergo a procedure that allows kidney function to be measured directly instead of being estimated based on blood tests. The goal was to develop an accurate approach to estimating GFR, the rate of fluid flow through the kidneys, from blood test results that didn’t rely on race.
Their studies showed that simply omitting race from the equation would underestimate GFR in Black study participants. The best solution, they found, was to calculate eGFR based on cystatin C, a small protein that the kidneys filter from the blood, in place of the standard creatinine. Estimation of GFR using cystatin C generated similarly accurate results but without the need to factor in race.
The second NIH-supported study led by Lesley Inker, Tufts Medical Center, Boston, MA, came to similar conclusions. They set out to develop new equations without race using data from several prior studies. They then compared the accuracy of their new eGFR equations to measured GFR in a validation set of 12 other studies, including about 4,000 participants.
Their findings show that currently used equations that include race, sex, and age overestimated measured GFR in Black Americans. However, taking race out of the equation without other adjustments underestimated measured GFR in Black people. Equations including both creatinine and cystatin C, but omitting race, were more accurate. The new equations also led to smaller estimated differences between Black and non-Black study participants.
The hope is that these findings will build momentum toward widespread adoption of cystatin C for estimating GFR. Already, a national task force has recommended immediate implementation of a new diagnostic equation that eliminates race and called for national efforts to increase the routine and timely measurement of cystatin C [3]. This will require a sea change in the standard measurements of blood chemistries in clinical and hospital labs—where creatinine is routinely measured, but cystatin C is not. As these findings are implemented into routine clinical care, let’s hope they’ll reduce health disparities by leading to more accurate and timely diagnosis, supporting the goals of precision health and encouraging treatment of CKD for all people, regardless of their race.
References:
[1] Race, genetic ancestry, and estimating kidney function in CKD. Hsu CY, Yang W, Parikh RV, Anderson AH, Chen TK, Cohen DL, He J, Mohanty MJ, Lash JP, Mills KT, Muiru AN, Parsa A, Saunders MR, Shafi T, Townsend RR, Waikar SS, Wang J, Wolf M, Tan TC, Feldman HI, Go AS; CRIC Study Investigators. N Engl J Med. 2021 Sep 23.
[2] New creatinine- and cystatin C-based equations to estimate GFR without race. Inker LA, Eneanya ND, Coresh J, Tighiouart H, Wang D, Sang Y, Crews DC, Doria A, Estrella MM, Froissart M, Grams ME, Greene T, Grubb A, Gudnason V, Gutiérrez OM, Kalil R, Karger AB, Mauer M, Navis G, Nelson RG, Poggio ED, Rodby R, Rossing P, Rule AD, Selvin E, Seegmiller JC, Shlipak MG, Torres VE, Yang W, Ballew SH,Couture SJ, Powe NR, Levey AS; Chronic Kidney Disease Epidemiology Collaboration. N Engl J Med. 2021 Sep 23.
[3] A unifying approach for GFR estimation: recommendations of the NKF-ASN Task Force on Reassessing the Inclusion of Race in Diagnosing Kidney Disease. Delgado C, Baweja M, Crews DC, Eneanya ND, Gadegbeku CA, Inker LA, Mendu ML, Miller WG, Moxey-Mims MM, Roberts GV, St Peter WL, Warfield C, Powe NR. Am J Kidney Dis. 2021 Sep 22:S0272-6386(21)00828-3.
Links:
Chronic Kidney Disease (National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases/NIH)
Explaining Your Kidney Test Results: A Tool for Clinical Use (NIDDK)
Chronic Renal Insufficiency Cohort Study
Chi-yuan Hsu (University of California, San Francisco)
Lesley Inker (Tufts Medical Center, Boston)
NIH Support: National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases
Most Vaccine-Hesitant People Remain Willing to Change Their Minds
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
As long and difficult as this pandemic has been, I remain overwhelmingly grateful for the remarkable progress being made, including the hard work of so many people to develop rapidly and then deploy multiple life-saving vaccines. And yet, grave concerns remain that vaccine hesitancy—the reluctance of certain individuals and groups to get themselves and their children vaccinated—could cause this pandemic to go on much longer than it should.
We’re seeing the results of such hesitancy in the news every day, highlighting the rampant spread of COVID-19 that’s stretching our healthcare systems and resources dangerously thin in many places. The vast majority of those currently hospitalized with COVID-19 are unvaccinated, and most of those tragic 2,000 deaths each day could have been prevented. The stories of children and adults who realized too late the importance of getting vaccinated are heartbreaking.
With these troubling realities in mind, I was encouraged to see a new study in the journal JAMA Network Open that tracked vaccine hesitancy over time in a random sample of more than 4,600 Americans. This national study shows that vaccine hesitancy isn’t set in stone. Over the course of this pandemic, hesitancy has decreased, and many who initially said no are now getting their shots. Many others who remain unvaccinated lean toward making an appointment.
The findings come from Aaron Siegler and colleagues, Emory University, Atlanta. They were interested in studying how entrenched vaccine hesitancy would be over time. The researchers also wanted to see how often those who were initially hesitant went on to get their shots.
To find out, they recruited a diverse, random, national sampling of individuals from August to December 2020, just before the first vaccines were granted Emergency Use Approval and became widely available. They wanted to get a baseline, or starting characterization, on vaccine hesitancy. Participants were asked two straightforward questions, “Have you received the COVID-19 vaccine?” and “How likely are you to get it in the future?” From March to April 2021, the researchers followed up by asking participants the same questions again when vaccines were more readily available to many (although still not all) adults.
The survey’s initial results showed that nearly 70 percent of respondents were willing to get vaccinated at the outset, with the other 30 percent expressing some hesitancy. The good news is among the nearly 3,500 individuals who answered the survey at follow-up, about a third who were initially vaccine hesitant already had received at least one shot. Another third also said that they’d now be willing to get the vaccine, even though they hadn’t just yet.
Among those who initially expressed a willingness to get vaccinated, about half had done so at follow up by spring 2021 (again, some still may not have been eligible). Forty percent said they were likely to get vaccinated. However, 7 percent of those who were initially willing said they were now less likely to get vaccinated than before.
There were some notable demographic differences. Folks over age 65, people who identified as non-Hispanic Asians, and those with graduate degrees were most likely to have changed their minds and rolled up their sleeves. Only about 15 percent in any one of these groups said they weren’t willing to be vaccinated. Most reluctant older people ultimately got their shots.
The picture was more static for people aged 45 to 54 and for those with a high school education or less. The majority of those remained unvaccinated, and about 40 percent still said they were unlikely to change their minds.
At the outset, people of Hispanic heritage were as willing as non-Hispanic whites to get vaccinated. At follow-up, however, fewer Hispanics than non-Hispanic whites said they’d gotten their shots. This finding suggests that, in addition to some hesitancy, there may be significant barriers still to overcome to make vaccination easier and more accessible to certain groups, including Hispanic communities from Central and South America.
Willingness among non-Hispanic Blacks was consistently lowest, but nearly half had gotten at least one dose of vaccine by the time they completed the second survey. That’s comparable to the vaccination rate in white study participants. For more recent data on vaccination rates by race/ethnicity, see this report from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Overall, while a small number of respondents grew more reluctant over time, most people grew more comfortable with the vaccines and were more likely to say they’d get vaccinated, if they hadn’t already. In fact, by the end of the study, the hesitant group had shrunk from 31 to 15 percent. It’s worth noting that the researchers checked the validity of self-reported vaccination using antibody tests and the results matched up rather well.
This is all mostly good news, but there’s clearly more work to do. An estimated 70 million eligible Americans have yet to get their first shot, and remain highly vulnerable to infection and serious illness from the Delta variant. They are capable of spreading the virus to other vulnerable people around them (including children), and incubating the next variants that might provide more resistance to the vaccines and therapies. They are also at risk for Long COVID, even after a relatively mild acute illness.
The work ahead involves answering questions and addressing concerns from people who remain hesitant. It’s also incredibly important to reach out to those willing, but unvaccinated, individuals, to see what can be done to help them get their shots. If you happen to be one of those, it’s easy to find the places near you that have free vaccines ready to administer. Go to vaccines.gov, or punch 438829 on your cell phone and enter your zip code—in less than a minute you will get the location of vaccine sites nearby.
Nearly 400 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered in communities all across the United States. More than 600,000 more are being administered on average each day. And yet, more than 80,000 new infections are still reported daily, and COVID-19 still steals the lives of about 2,000 mostly unvaccinated people each day.
These vaccines are key for protecting yourself and ultimately beating this pandemic. As these findings show, the vast majority of Americans understand this and either have been vaccinated or are willing to do so. Let’s keep up the good work, and see to it that even more minds will be changed—and more individuals protected before they may find it’s too late.
Reference:
[1] Trajectory of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy over time and association of initial vaccine hesitancy with subsequent vaccination. Siegler AJ, Luisi N, Hall EW, Bradley H, Sanchez T, Lopman BA, Sullivan PS. JAMA Netw Open. 2021 Sep 1;4(9):e2126882.
Links:
COVID-19 Research (NIH)
COVID-19 Vaccinations in the United States (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta)
Aaron Siegler (Emory University, Atlanta)
NIH Support: National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases
Vast Majority of Pregnant Women with COVID-19 Won’t Have Complications, Study Finds
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
It’s natural and highly appropriate for women to be concerned about their health and the wellbeing of their unborn babies during pregnancy. With the outbreak of the pandemic, those concerns have only increased, especially after a study found last spring that about 30 percent of pregnant women who become infected with SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, needed to be hospitalized [1].
But that early study didn’t clearly divide out hospitalizations that were due to pregnancy from those owing to complications of COVID-19. Now, a large, observational study has taken a more comprehensive look at the issue and published some reassuring news for parents-to-be: the vast majority of women who test positive for COVID-19 during their pregnancies won’t develop serious health complications [2]. What’s more, it’s also unlikely that their newborns will become infected with SARS-CoV-2.
The findings reported in JAMA Network Open come from a busy prenatal clinic that serves women who are medically indigent at Parkland Health and Hospital System, affiliated with the University of Texas Southwestern, Dallas. Researchers there, led by obstetrician Emily Adhikari, followed more than 3,300 pregnant women, most of whom were Hispanic (75 percent) or African American (14 percent). From March through August of this year, 252 women tested positive for COVID-19 during their pregnancies.
At diagnosis, 95 percent were asymptomatic or had only mild symptoms. Only 13 of the 252 COVID-19-positive women (5 percent) in the study developed severe or critical pneumonia, including just six with no or mild symptoms initially. Only 14 women (6 percent) were admitted to the hospital for management of their COVID-19 pneumonia, and all survived.
By comparing mothers with and without COVID-19 during pregnancy, the researchers found there was no increase in adverse pregnancy-related outcomes. Overall, women with COVID-19 during pregnancy were not more likely to give birth early on average. They weren’t at increased risk of dangerous preeclampsia, a pregnancy complication characterized by high blood pressure and organ damage, or an emergency C-section to protect the baby.
The researchers found no evidence that the placenta was compromised in any way by the SARS-CoV-2 infection. In most cases, newborns didn’t get sick. Only 6 of 188 infants (3 percent) tested positive for COVID-19. Most of those infected were born to mothers who were asymptomatic or had only mild illness.
This is all encouraging news. However, it is worth noting that mothers who developed severe COVID-19 before reaching 37 weeks, or well into the third trimester of pregnancy, were more likely to give birth prematurely. More research is needed, but the study also suggests that diabetes may increase the risk for severe COVID-19 in pregnancy.
This study’s bottom line is that most women who become infected with SARS-CoV-2 during pregnancy will do just fine. That doesn’t mean, however, that anyone should take this situation casually. The finding that 5 percent of pregnant women may become severely ill is still cause for concern. Plus not all researchers come to the same conclusion—an update to the first study cited in this post recently found a greater risk for pregnant women becoming severely ill from COVID-19 and giving birth prematurely.
Taken together, while there’s no need to panic about COVID-19 infection during pregnancy, it’s still a good idea for pregnant women and their loved ones to take extra precautions to protect their health. And, of course, follow the three W’s: Wear a mask, Watch your distance, and Wash your hands.
References:
[1] Characteristics of women of reproductive age with laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection by pregnancy status—United States, January 22–June 7, 2020. CDC COVID-19 Response Team. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2020 Mar 27;69(12):343-346.
[2] Pregnancy outcomes among women with and without severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection. Adhikari EH, Moreno W, Zofkie AC, MacDonald L, McIntire DD, Collins RRJ, Spong CY. JAMA Netw Open. 2020 Nov 2;3(11):e2029256.
Links:
Coronavirus (COVID) (NIH)
Combat COVID (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, D.C.)
Data on COVID-19 during Pregnancy: Severity of Maternal Illness (Centers for Disease Control and Prevent, Atlanta)
COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines: Special Considerations in Pregnancy (NIH)
Emily Adhikari (University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas)
Study Highlights Need for Continued Care of COVID-19 Survivors
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
The past several months have shown that most people hospitalized with COVID-19 will get better. As inspiring as it is to see these patients breathe on their own and converse with their loved ones again, we are learning that many will leave the hospital still quite ill and in need of further care. But little has been published to offer a detailed demographic picture of those being discharged from our nation’s hospitals and the types of community-based care and monitoring that will be needed to keep them on the road to recovery.
A recent study in the journal EClinicalMedicine helps to fill in those gaps by chronicling the early COVID-19 experience of three prominent hospitals in the Boston area: Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Newton-Wellesley Hospital. These data were reported from a patient registry of 247 middle-aged and older COVID-19 patients. The patients were admitted over three weeks last March into one of these hospitals, which are part of New England’s largest integrated health network.
The data confirm numerous previous reports that COVID-19 disproportionately affects people of color. The researchers, led by Jason H. Wasfy and Cian P. McCarthy, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, found a large number of their patients were Hispanic (30 percent) or Black (10 percent). Wasfy said these numbers could be driven by many factors, including a low income, more family members living in one home, greater difficulty accessing healthcare, presence of chronic illness (health disparities), and serving as essential workers during the pandemic.
The researchers also tracked the patients after discharge for about 80 days. About a third of patients left the hospital for a post-acute care facility to continue their rehabilitation. After discharge, many required supplemental oxygen (15 percent), tube feeding (9 percent), or treatment with medications including antipsychotics and prescription painkillers (16 percent). About 10 percent were readmitted to the hospital within weeks or months of their initial discharge.
Wasfy and colleagues also found:
· Many patients undergoing treatment were enrolled in Medicaid (20 percent) or both Medicaid and Medicare (12 percent).
· A substantial number also were retired (36 percent) or unemployed (8.5 percent), highlighting the role of non-occupational spread. Many others worked in the hospitality industry, healthcare, or public transportation.
· A large proportion (42 percent) of hospitalized patients required intensive care. The good news is that most of them (86 percent) ultimately recovered enough to be discharged from the hospital. Tragically, 14 percent—34 of 247 people—died in the hospital.
These findings represent hospitals in just one notable American city hard hit early in the pandemic. But they spotlight the importance of public health efforts to prevent COVID-19 among the most vulnerable and reduce its most devastating social impacts. These are critical points, and NIH has recently begun supporting community engagement research efforts in areas hardest hit by COVID-19. With this support and access to needed post-discharge care, we aim to help more COVID survivors stay on the road to a full recovery.
Reference:
[1] Early clinical and sociodemographic experience with patients hospitalized with COVID-19 at a large American healthcare system. McCarthy CP et al. EClinicalMedicine. August 19, 2020.
Links:
Coronavirus (COVID-19) (NIH)
Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston)
Brigham and Women’s Hospital (Boston)
Newton-Wellesley Hospital (Newton, MA)
Jason Wasfy (Massachusetts General Hospital)
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