Articles Tagged with ''prescription medication''

From 2000 to 2014 nearly half a million Americans died from drug overdoses. Opioid overdose deaths, including both opioid pain relievers and heroin, hit record levels in 2014, with an alarming 14 percent increase in just one year, according to new data published today in CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Each day, 44 people in the United States die from overdose of prescription painkillers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

A new analysis of data from the 2012 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) has found that most American adults have experienced some level of pain, from brief to more lasting pain, and from relatively minor to more severe pain.

The National Safety Council released its annual list of states with the lowest and highest rates of unintentional injury-related deaths[i], which include poisonings – largely from drug overdoses – car crashes and falls. For the second straight year, Maryland has the lowest rate of unintentional injury death, with 26.9 deaths per every 100,000 people – far below the national rate of 40.6. West Virginia has the highest rate for the third time in four years.

One in three people say they would risk living a shorter life instead of taking a daily pill to prevent cardiovascular disease, according to new research in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, an American Heart Association journal.

It’s been an unprecedented year for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as America’s public health agency continues its emergency response to the most complex Ebola epidemic in history. Ebola, however, is far from the only critical mission CDC undertook in 2014.

The number of people overdosing from opioid prescription painkillers is staggering, killing 45 people each day. Twenty-three percent of the workforce has misused prescription painkillers, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, making opioid use a serious threat to employee safety. Even when employees are taking opioid painkillers at the correct dosage with a valid prescription, subtle impairment may compromise workplace safety.

June is National Safety Month, and the National Safety Council is calling on Americans to take notice of the fifth* leading cause of death – unintentional injuries. Every four minutes someone in the U.S dies from an unintentional injury. That’s 120,000 people a year.

The number of prescription painkiller overdose deaths increased fivefold among women between 1999 and 2010, according to a Vital Signs report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While men are more likely to die of a prescription painkiller overdose, since 1999 the percentage increase in deaths was greater among women (400 percent in women compared to 265 percent in men).