Healthday News
February 8, 2017

Drinking alcohol while taking powerful opioid painkillers can trigger a potentially deadly respiratory problem, particularly in seniors, a new study warns.

“Unfortunately, we’re seeing more fatalities and people in emergency rooms after having misused or abused legally prescribed opioids, like oxycodone, while having consumed alcohol,” said study author Dr. Albert Dahan.

“Respiratory depression [where breathing becomes very shallow or stops temporarily] is a potentially fatal complication of opioid use. We found alcohol exacerbated the already harmful respiratory effects of opioids,” Dahan said.

Dahan is head of the Anesthesia and Pain Research Unit at Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands.

In the study, the researchers assessed how mixing the opioid painkiller oxycodone and alcohol affected 12 younger volunteers, aged 21 to 28, and 12 older volunteers, aged 66 to 77. None of the participants had taken opioids previously.

Oxycodone, an ingredient in the brand-name drugs OxyContin and Percocet, is widely prescribed to treat chronic pain.

More than 2 million Americans abuse opioids, according to the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse. Every day, 78 people die from opioid overdoses, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Meanwhile, reports have shown that these deaths often involve other substances such as alcohol, the researchers noted.

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