While tramadol abuse led to it becoming a controlled substance, the abuse of gabapentin is different, McNamee said. "There was a perception, because it wasn't scheduled, it was less dangerous," McNamee said. In 20, McNamee said the board saw tramadol prescribing had increased before it was added to the list of scheduled, or controlled, drugs. The Centers for Disease control lists gabapentin as an appropriate non-opioid medication to prescribe for chronic nerve pain. While it's too early in the tracking and analysis process to know why gabapentin is being prescribed more, in recent years doctors have been guided away from prescribing so many opioids, like oxycodone, due to their addictive nature and contribution to the current heroin epidemic. "We wanted to start the process (of tracking gabapentin prescriptions) since it's linked to controlled prescription use and abuse," McNamee said. The decision to track gabapentin prescriptions was the result of three things, said Cameron McNamee, director of policy and communications for the pharmacy board: pharmacists reporting an upward trend in prescriptions drug trends report indicating the drug had a street value and about 1 percent of drug overdose deaths having noted gabapentin as one of the drugs the person had been taking. "It was really eye-opening to learn it was the number one prescribed drug," Sherba said. Analysis of the data revealed it wasn't just the top drug dispensed in the state in December, but it was dispensed at a 30 percent higher rate than the number two drug, oxycodone. The Ohio Board of Pharmacy began collecting data on the amount of gabapentin being dispensed across the state Dec. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as being an "appropriate non-opioid treatment for chronic pain, recommending the drug as a first-line agent for neuropathic pain," according to the network's alert. Gabapentin has been identified by the U.S. While the monitoring network doesn't specifically ask about Neurontin or gabapentin when interviewing, contacts in six of the eight regions - Athens, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, and Youngstown - reported moderate-to-high availability and illicit use. "I think this is being driven by the heroin epidemic for sure," said Tom Sherba, principle investigator for the Ohio Substance Abuse Monitoring Network.Īlthough gabapentin historically had a low abuse profile, treatment providers, drug users, and law enforcement have reported to the monitoring network a greater presence of the drug being sold and used illegally over the past six months. This week, the Ohio Substance Abuse Monitoring Network issued an alert that abuse of gabapentin, more commonly known by the brand name Neurontin, has been on the rise over the past six months, especially by those with a history of abuse to heroin and prescription pain pills. COLUMBUS - A non-narcotic pain pill that led the state in prescriptions in December is becoming more widely abused.
0 kommentar(er)
