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Norway, Sweden, and Denmark have significantly higher regulations on prescribing of opioids, but they also have ageing populations who report the highest prevalence of chronic pain in the world.
Researchers from SERAF, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Karolinske University, and the University of Copenhagen analyzed twelve years of opioid prescription registry data from each of their countries.
Most prescription opioid users in Norway
One out of every eight Norwegian women and one of eleven Norwegian men received a prescription opioid as an outpatient in 2017. These prevalence rates were higher than both Sweden and Denmark.
What is most alarming is the increase in the amount of people in all three countries who are receiving oxycodone each year. Oxycodone’s health risks, including addiction, have unfortunately been well-established by North America. In Sweden, the amount of people with an outpatient prescription for oxycodone has more than tripled since 2006. Norway´s increase in oxycodone prescription has been slower but steady in the past twelve years, and Norwegians receive an average dose nearly quadruple that of Swedes.
Worrying use for chronic pain
The article, available in the Scandinavian Journal of Pain, also reviews trends in tramadol and codeine, and discusses prescription registries´ roles in monitoring opioids trends. Regulation of opioid prescribing for chronic non-cancer pain have been liberalized in Norway in recent years, and as our data shows, prescription and use have correspondingly increased. At the same time, forensic analyses have shown that these prescriptions are increasingly represented in deadly overdoses: we must be on the alert for developments in both use and harmful consequences.
It is imperative that Norway avoids the North American crisis of opioid prescription overdose deaths. These strong prescriptions, as a general rule, should not be used for chronic non-cancer pain.
Read the article here:
Prescribed opioid analgesic use developments in three Nordic countries, 2006–2017