A study conducted by the Yale School of Medicine revealed that over the past two decades, more than 5,000 children and adolescents have lost their lives in the United States due to fentanyl overdoses.
The research, recently published by the American Medical Association of Pediatrics, notes that fentanyl-related deaths among minors increased more than 30-fold between 2013 and 2021, the period when the wave of synthetic opioid overdose deaths began in the country.
The study examined reports of opioid deaths in people under age 20, using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other sources, in the period from 1999 to 2021. It found that 5,194 children and adolescents lost their lives to fentanyl. In 1999, only nine deaths from the substance were recorded, while in 2021, the number increased to 1,557 deaths in children under 19, including 40 infants and 93 children aged 1 to 4, according to the study.
Julie Gaither, study author and assistant professor of pediatrics and epidemiology at Yale School of Medicine, said fentanyl is now the leading agent in the pediatric opioid crisis. Gaither lamented that no child should die from an opioid and stressed that this crisis affects not only the adult population but everyone in the country, including the most vulnerable, such as infants.
In 2021, the United States recorded 70,601 overdose deaths from synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl, representing the largest increase in overdose deaths in the country’s history.
Gaither explained that during the 1990s, when the crisis intensified, there was overprescribing of opioids, and people developed opioid use disorders. Since 2013, most fatal overdoses have been caused by illegally manufactured opioids.
The study author warned that the problem is worsening and has not been effectively addressed. She stressed that most of the measures taken so far do not specifically target children. In the case of young children, exposure generally occurs at home.
According to the study, 43.8% of deaths among people under 20 years of age occurred at home. Approximately 87.5% of these overdoses were unintentional, and benzodiazepines were found in 17.1% of the cases.
Deaths peaked in all age groups in 2020 and 2021, when the problem was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.