Girls more likely to abuse prescription pain meds

Updated 10:00 AM November 14, 2005

Girls more likely to abuse prescription pain meds

By Colleen Newvine
News Service

Twenty-two percent of girls and 10 percent of boys in a recent U-M study reported using pain medications not prescribed for them—behavior strongly linked to abuse of other substances.

In a study of 5th through 10th graders from an ethnically diverse school district in metro Detroit, researchers found young people who use pain medication that was not prescribed for them were eight times more likely to have used other illicit drugs; seven times more likely to smoke cigarettes; five times more likely to drink alcohol and smoke marijuana; and nearly four times more likely to binge drink.

Carol Boyd, lead author on a paper pending in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence and a researcher at the Substance Abuse Research Center (SARC), says the behavior is not simply a matter of young people looking to get high from Vicodin, OxyContin or Tylenol 3 with codeine.

"There are a number of young people who apparently do not get the treatment they need so they self-medicate and that can begin the downward spiral into substance abuse problems," says Boyd, who also is a professor of nursing and of women's studies.

Boyd, an expert on pain medication abuse, says she and co-authors Sean Esteban McCabe, an assistant research scientist at SARC, and Christian Teter, a former
U-M graduate student and now a clinical research pharmacist at the Northeastern University School of Pharmacy, are not sure why girls are more prone to sharing medications, but they hope to do research with focus groups to find out.

Boyd notes that girls appear almost twice as likely to have prescriptions for pain medication, so it may be that pills are more available to them. As girls commiserate about menstrual pain and migraine headaches—more common among females—sharing medication could be a logical extension of feminine friendships. That sharing of drugs could lead to addictions, she says.

The study was supported by grants from U-M and the National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health. Researchers also found:

• Thirty-two percent of young people who offered an explanation about where they obtained prescription pain pills said they acquired the drugs from a family member;

• Even young people who used pain medication only as prescribed were more than twice as likely to use cigarettes and marijuana than their peers;

• White and African American students reported abuse of prescription drugs at nearly identical rates;

• None of the students reported getting prescription drugs on the Internet.

Young adults in the study believed that prescription medications are safer than street drugs, but when questioned they knew little about dosing or drug interactions, Boyd says.

The study also showed the number of students who said they had abused prescription pain medications increased as students grew older—13 percent of 7th graders versus 26 percent of 10th-graders.

Boyd says this could be a matter of increased life experience, or it could be the result of relaxed medication restrictions for high school students. In the school district studied, middle school students were required to keep medications in the principal's office, but high school students were allowed to carry their medications. That could make it easier to share with friends or to sell, Boyd says.

Boyd has done extensive research on a range of substance use and abuse issues, including binge drinking and drug use in college students. She is director of the Institute for Research on Women and Gender and former SARC director.

Girls more likely to abuse prescription pain meds

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