{"id":2230,"date":"2018-03-09T18:23:43","date_gmt":"2018-03-10T02:23:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/keck.usc.edu\/news\/researcher-opioid-abuse-leads-to-heroin-use-hepatitis-c-epidemic\/"},"modified":"2023-11-26T08:23:39","modified_gmt":"2023-11-26T16:23:39","slug":"researcher-opioid-abuse-leads-to-heroin-use-hepatitis-c-epidemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/keck.usc.edu\/news\/researcher-opioid-abuse-leads-to-heroin-use-hepatitis-c-epidemic\/","title":{"rendered":"Researcher: Opioid abuse leads to heroin use, hepatitis C epidemic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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\n\n \n Press Release<\/span>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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Researcher: Opioid abuse leads to heroin use, hepatitis C epidemic<\/h1>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
\n \n March 09, 2018<\/span>\n <\/div>\n \n \n
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Increasing rates of opioid use in the U.S. have public health consequences like heroin usage and the spread of hepatitis C, USC researchers say. (Photo\/Jeffrey Beall)<\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n \n \n \n\n<\/div>\n \n\n <\/div><\/div>\n\r\n\r\n\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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Heroin is worse than other drugs because people inject it much sooner, potentially resulting in increased risk of injection-related epidemics such as hepatitis C and HIV, a Keck School of Medicine of USC study shows.
\nAs more people use opioids, many switch to heroin because it\u2019s more potent and cheaper \u2014 a trend that complicates disease prevention as health officials crack down on opioids, said Ricky Bluthenthal<\/a>, PhD, first author of the study and professor of preventive medicine at the Keck School.
\nStigmatizing drug use is an ineffective way to address a public health outbreak, he added.
\n\u201cThe market is saturated with opiates. That cat is out of the bag,\u201d Bluthenthal said. \u201cAt this point, we have to figure out what we\u2019re going to do about opioid abuse because the opioid crisis is leading to downstream infectious disease epidemics such as acute hepatitis C.\u201d
\nPublished in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence<\/em> on Feb. 15<\/a>, the study surveyed 776 people in Los Angeles and San Francisco about their drug use. Researchers limited the investigation to heroin, methamphetamine or speed, powder cocaine and crack cocaine.
\nAbout 99 percent of participants who used heroin, regardless of demographics, eventually injected the drug \u2014 nearly three times the injection rate of people who used crack cocaine. The second most injected drug was meth or speed, with 85 percent of users reporting that they moved to injection.
\nHeroin had the shortest incubation period \u2014 about half a year \u2014 from initial drug use to drug injection. It took meth and speed users about twice that time and powder cocaine users nearly five times that length of time to begin injecting.
\n\u201cHeroin is less expensive than opioids and more potent,\u201d Bluthenthal said. \u201cSo transitioning to heroin is reasonable. Heroin is much more efficient when injected, and that\u2019s why we see this trend.\u201d
\nOn the road to a solution<\/strong>
\nAs the nation tries to clamp down on the opioid epidemic, it may inadvertently drive people to heroin more quickly, Bluthenthal said. The real solution, he noted, is to get people better treatment for their opioid addiction.
\nFrom 2002 to 2015, there was a six-fold increase in the number of overdose deaths involving heroin, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
\nHepatitis C linked to injection drug use has increased three-fold over a 10-year period, the study stated, citing research from the University of Cincinnati Medical Center.
\n\u201cWe want to interrupt people from escalating their drug use from legal prescription opioids to illicit heroin use,\u201d Bluthenthal said.
\nPossible solutions include drug consumption rooms, supervised injection facilities, syringe exchange programs, overdose prevention education and naloxone distribution, Bluthenthal said. Naloxone is an antidote for opioid overdose.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re always trailing the epidemic: We don\u2019t know there is a problem until the bodies and infections start showing up,\u201d Bluthenthal said. \u201cWe now know people are moving from opioids to heroin to injection. We missed the opportunity to change that progression, so we need to move more aggressively to reduce opioid abuse and to implement safer venues to consume drugs. The end result will benefit public health.\u201d
\nDaniel Chu and Thomas Valente from the Keck School of Medicine, Alex Kral and Lynn Wenger from RTI International and Philippe Bourgois from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA also contributed to this study.
\nThe study was entirely supported by federal grants amounting to $1,656,797 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (R01DA027689, R01 DA038965) and the National Cancer Institute (P30CA014089).
\n\u2014 Zen Vuong<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Heroin is worse than other drugs because people inject it much sooner, potentially resulting in increased risk of injection-related epidemics such as hepatitis C and HIV, a Keck School of Medicine of USC study shows.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":168,"featured_media":2231,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[34],"class_list":["post-2230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-press-release","tag-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nResearcher: Opioid abuse leads to heroin use, hepatitis C epidemic<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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