Rural Opioid Use Is Driving A Spike In Babies Born With Drug Addiction

The number of babies born with symptoms of opioid withdrawal spiked between 2004 and 2013, driven by opioid use in rural areas, according to a study published Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics. In 2004, rates of infant withdrawal, known as neonatal abstinence syndrome, were roughly similar in rural and urban areas, with about one out of every 1,000 babies born with withdrawal symptoms. By 2013, there were approximately five babies born with NAS for every 1,000 births in urban areas, and eight babies born with NAS for every 1,000 births in rural areas.  Together, this translated to a fivefold increase in NAS births between 2000 and 2012, according to study published in the Journal of Perinatology in 2015. “Although our data cannot explain the reasons why NAS is happening so much more commonly in rural areas, we know that rural communities have unique challenges around achieving good health,” Dr. Nicole Villapiano, lead author of the new study and a pediatrician at C. S. Mott Children’s Hospital at the University of Michigan, told The Huffington Post. Historically, the drug overdose death rate in urban areas outstripped the overdose death rate in rural areas. But that phenomenon reversed between 2002 and 2014, according to the New York Times. Today, the largest concentration of overdose deaths are in Appalachia and the Southwest. Part of that flip can be attributed to poverty in rural areas, which tend be poorer than urban ones, an...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news