2023-05-30 17:58:40
Red alert. The French Society of Pharmacology (SFPT) warns against the “worrying” increase in the use of oxycodone, a highly addictive opiate drug used in the management of pain. This painkiller is steeped in history since it was the first drug that found itself at the center of the opioid crisis in the United States in the 1990s.
In France, its involvement in toxic deaths by analgesics quadrupled between 2013 and 2017. If the first level 3 analgesic used is still morphine, it is closely followed by oxycodone, which has increased sharply (+ 738% since 2006) , both in the city and in the hospital.
Oxycodone hooks more than morphine
Recommended in the management of post-operative pain, oxycodone should not be prescribed as first-line treatment, reports the learned society, but only when morphine is not effective. Due, in particular, to its “more addictogenic profile”. Pharmacologists add that this opiate has no pharmacological advantage over morphine.
Faced with this worrying development, the French Society of Pharmacology wishes to see if a portion of the population receives prescriptions that extend beyond 15 days, in order to identify potential misuse, or even a “use disorder”.
Every day, eight people are hospitalized for an overdose
According to data from the French Observatory of Analgesic Medicines (Ofma), it is estimated that every day, eight people are hospitalized for an overdose due to an opioid analgesic, and that more than four die from it every week. Among the most implicated drugs are tramadol (37 deaths in 2016), morphine (22 deaths), codeine (16 deaths) and oxycodone (8 deaths).
The situation in France is disproportionate to the scale of the American crisis, but it is closely monitored by the Medicines Agency and the addictovigilance network. The American example shows that once the crisis is established, it cannot be stopped. Across the Atlantic, years of prescriptions and pressure from the pharmaceutical industry have led to an epidemic of deaths from overdoses due to synthetic opiates (half a million Americans have died in twenty years). And in recent years, despite the measures taken by the public authorities, the American crisis is accelerating.
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