Fentanyl-stimulant deaths among older adults surge 9,000% in 8 years: Study
Popular media likes to paint the fentanyl crisis as an epidemic that’s exclusively claiming the lives of young Americans. Now, a new study is challenging the simplified narrative and suggests older adults are just as susceptible to overdosing on the powerful opioid.
A 9,000% increase
During this year’s meeting of the American Society of Anesthesiologists, a team of scientists is presenting their research on opioid use among Americans aged 65 and older. What they found is that over the past eight years, overdose deaths among this age group have increased a staggering 9,000%.
Those deaths were caused by overdoses from fentanyl mixed with other stimulants, including cocaine and methamphetamines.
“A common misconception is that opioid overdoses primarily affect younger people,” said Gab Pasia, the study’s lead author. “Our analysis shows that older adults are also impacted by fentanyl-related deaths and that stimulant involvement has become much more common in this group.”
Pasia and his team looked at nearly 500,000 death certificates, registered between 1999 and 2023, that listed fentanyl as the cause of death. The records were stored in a digital repository managed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Younger adults, or those aged 25 to 64, represented the vast majority of fentanyl-related deaths, at 387,924. Older adults, meanwhile, accounted for 17,040 deaths. Nevertheless, fentanyl-stimulant deaths among those 65 and older increased from 8.7% in 2015 to 49.9% in 2023, signifying a 9,000% increase.
Deadly mixtures
The researchers noted that toxicology reports from fentanyl-related deaths among older adults usually included another substance, most commonly cocaine and methamphetamine.
It was also noted that despite older adults being underrepresented in opioid research, the group is particularly vulnerable due to chronic health conditions, the number of medications they are prescribed, and the difficulty their bodies have with processing drugs.
“National data have shown rising fentanyl-stimulant use among all adults,” said Pasia. “The findings underscore that fentanyl overdoses in older adults are often multi-substance deaths — not due to fentanyl alone — and the importance of sharing drug misuse prevention strategies to older patients.”
The opioid epidemic since the 1990s
According to the CDC, the opioid epidemic has manifested in three waves, beginning with prescription opioid overdoses in the 1990s. That was followed by a significant rise in heroin overdoses in the 2010s, which gave way to a rise in synthetic opioid overdoses around 2013. The American Society of Anesthesiologists says a fourth wave hit around 2015, marked by an increase in deaths related to a mixture of fentanyl and other stimulants.
“With these trends in mind, it is more important than ever to minimize opioid use in this vulnerable group and use other pain control methods when appropriate,” Richard Wang, one of the study’s co-authors, said. “Proper patient education and regularly reviewing medication lists could help to flatten this terrible trend.”
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
