High Rate of Opioid Prescribing to Children With Asthma

Opioid prescribing to children and adolescents with asthma is high, according to a study presented May 20, 2019, during a poster session at ISPOR 2019 in New Orleans, Louisiana.

“Case reports suggested that opioids could potentially increase the risk of asthma exacerbation either via chronic airway inflammation or via epithelial destruction leading to hyper-irritable airways,” wrote researchers from the University of Houston, who advised further analysis into the risk of asthma exacerbation and opioid use.

Researchers used data from a Medicaid managed care plan in Texas to look at opioid prescribing to nearly 800,000 children and adolescents between 2013 and 2016. Just over 12% of the children had asthma.

The prevalence of opioid analgesic use was 11.6% in children with asthma and 5.9% in children without asthma, researchers reported. The prevalence of opioid antitussive use was 1.2% in children with asthma and 0.4% in children without asthma.

Codeine was the most commonly prescribed opioid, making up 59.5% of opioid analgesic prescriptions and 98.9% of cough suppressant prescriptions, according to the poster. Nearly 48% of children with asthma filled three or more prescriptions for opioid medications.

The research did uncover one positive trend: the total number of opioid prescriptions filled by children with asthma dropped slightly, from 13.9% to 13.4%, between 2013 and 2016.

“Although the utilization trend has decreased during the study period, the overall utilization rate remained high,” researchers wrote, “and the long-term use was common.”

—Jolynn Tumolo

Reference

Nair A, Chen H. Opioid prescription drug utilization in children and adolescents with asthma. Abstract presented at ISPOR 2019. May 20, 2019.