TUESDAY, Oct. 22, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- Expanded access to addiction treatment and the overdose-reversal med naloxone likely prompted a 37% reduction in OD deaths linked to opioids taken with meth or other stimulant drugs, a new study suggests.

OD death rates were 8.9 deaths per 100,000 in communities with expanded access to treatment and naloxone, compared to 14.1 deaths per 100,000 in communities that didn’t have this increased access, researchers report.

“It was nice to see that we were able to achieve reductions in overdose deaths involving this combination of opioids, primarily fentanyl and psychostimulants, not including cocaine, because that’s the most recent wave in the epidemic that we’re seeing,” said lead researcher Bridget Freisthler, a professor at Ohio State University.

For the study, researchers analyzed the effects of the HEALing Communities Study, a National Institutes of Health effort to address opioid-related OD deaths.

Based on the needs of their specific area, local agencies selected from three “menus” of evidence-based practices focused on overdose education, naloxone distribution, medication to treat opioid addiction and safer opioid prescribing.

Initially, this program did not result in a statistically significant reduction in opioid OD deaths. Communities with the program had an 8% lower rate of all drug ODs compared to those that didn’t participate.

But researchers noted that more than 40% of OD deaths in the study involved the combination of at least one opioid and a stimulant, most frequently fentanyl mixed with meth.

Given that, the program adjusted its community education efforts, Freisthler said. Messages focused on the threat of this drug combination, as well as on the fact that naloxone can prevent OD deaths in people who use multiple drugs, researchers said.

“We were already shifting to where psychostimulants had fentanyl in them and messages weren’t reaching the right folks because people who use psychostimulants think of themselves as using meth or cocaine, not opioids,” Freisthler said in a news release. “So, we had to make it clear that fentanyl could be in every drug and that nobody was really immune from the possibility of an overdose. Communities emphasized that this is a multiple-drug issue, not just a fentanyl issue or an opioid issue.”

As a result, OD deaths from a mix of opioids and stimulants significantly declined in participating communities.

The findings were published Oct. 21 in the journal JAMA Network Open.

“The drug overdose crisis is pervasive in our communities, and we’ve got multigenerational and intergenerational trauma affecting families. That’s not going to change overnight,” Freisthler said. “That means we need to continue to improve understanding of this crisis, and reduce overdose deaths so we don’t have another generation experiencing the same sort of trauma.”

More information

The National Institutes of Health has more on its HEALing Communities Study.

SOURCE: Ohio State University, news release, Oct. 21, 2024