Within the past two decades, opioid use has grown into a national crisis. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), around 2.7 million people ages 12+ reported having opioid use disorder (OUD) in 2020. And nearly 645,000 people died from an overdose between 1999 and 2021, with rapid increases in overdoses during the 2010s.
Many people were first exposed to opioids in the 1990s, when they became pain management medications. From there, some may have pursued illegal drugs due to untreated pain or addiction. “The pathways from opioid exposure to OUD are complex and difficult to entangle,” says Hsueh-Han Yeh, Ph.D., an assistant scientist at Henry Ford Health’s Center for Health Policy and Health Services Research. “Opioids now have major funding toward them to research treatment for addiction.”
Risk Factors For Opioid Use Disorder
To better understand the opioid epidemic, Dr. Yeh and a team of researchers used surveys and electronic health records to identify sociodemographic risk factors for OUD in the United States. They found:
- Men were most likely to use street opioids within their lifetime—especially young, white men. Young white men were also most likely to receive an OUD diagnosis.
- White people were more likely than Black or Asian people to use prescription opioids nonmedically within their lifetime.
- Those who were born in the United States were at an increased risk for street and prescription opioid use compared to those who weren’t born in the United States.
Get Help For Addiction
“Our research included marginalized groups, which previous opioid research hasn’t included: those who are homeless, active-duty members of the military, those in prison and hospitals,” says Dr. Yeh. “Our data is from the All of Us research program, which aims to reach a robust, diverse population. This is important to identify environmental and genetic risk factors for OUD so we can eventually tailor treatments to someone’s specific genes.”
Previous research suggests inherited genetic variants increase someone’s susceptibility to OUD. Additional genetic factors like underlying mental health disorders, and environmental factors like socioeconomic status, trauma and stress, could also play a role in someone’s susceptibility to opioid addiction.
Recognizing Opioid Use Disorder & Getting Treatment
Today, in response to the opioid crisis, medical professionals prescribe opioids much more conservatively. “Many states have passed legislation limiting opioid prescriptions. In Michigan, effective July 1, 2018, prescribers are no longer allowed to exceed a seven-day supply of opioids for treating acute pain, even for post-surgery patients,” says Dr. Yeh.
To treat opioid use disorder, there is a treatment called medication-assisted therapy (MAT), which combines medication with counseling and behavioral therapies. There is also a treatment called naloxone, which can reverse the effects of an opioid overdose when administered in time.
But hopefully, with more research, tailored treatments and early intervention will help everyone successfully recover from OUD.
“It’s about pinpointing genetic and environmental risk factors so we can get a clear picture of those at an elevated risk for OUD,” says Brian Ahmedani, Ph.D., LMSW, director of Henry Ford’s Center for Health Policy & Health Services Research. “Sometimes treatments only work for certain groups of people so we want to see whether that’s the case with OUD. We also want to clearly understand who needs help so we can start offering them resources sooner in the disease process, rather than waiting to find out someone is in crisis. That’s the long-term vision of all of this.”
Reviewed by Hsueh-Han Yeh, Ph.D., assistant scientist at Henry Ford’s Center for Health Policy and Health Services Research, and Brian Ahmedani, Ph.D., LMSW, director of Henry Ford’s Center for Health Policy and Health Services Research.
