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Strong Correlation Between Positive Drug Screens and Overdose Deaths, Study Shows
A strong correlation between urine drug test (UDT) results and drug overdose deaths was identified in a new study conducted by researchers from Millennium Health and the Ohio State University College of Medicine. Findings were published on JAMA Network Open.
Using national-, state-, and county-level data, researchers were able to demonstrate and characterize the relationship between UDT positivity rates for drugs of significant concern, such as illicit fentanyl and methamphetamine, and overdose mortality.
“The timeliness of UDT results, combined with having demonstrated these correlations, allows us to now explore methods for timely prediction of overdose mortality signals or ‘hotspots’ utilizing our UDT results versus traditional tracking methods,” Penn Whitley, senior director of bioinformatics, Millennium Health, said in a news release.
The study included 500,000 unique patient specimens from substance use disorder treatment facilities in all 50 states from 2013 to 2020. The correlation coefficients between positive UDT results for illicit fentanyl and methamphetamine and overdose deaths were both 0.96, a near-perfect correlation. Further, all drug categories were “significantly and strongly correlated” with overdose deaths when detected along with illicit fentanyl.
“These findings suggest UDT is a valuable data source that is capable of informing real-time surveillance efforts to alert communities about changes in the drug environment that might be associated with drug overdose deaths,” the researchers concluded.
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