Do Opioids Increase Risk for Invasive Pneumococcal Disease?

The rapidly increasing national awareness of an opioid crisis in the U.S. has focused on addiction and on mortality associated with overdosing. However, several studies have suggested that opioid drugs can also be an independent risk factor for serious infection.

To examine this issue, investigators conducted a retrospective nested case–control study using clinical and pharmacy data on patients enrolled in TennCare, a managed Medicaid program in Tennessee, in which they compared the incidence of laboratory-proven invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD) in 1233 prescription opioid users (cases) with IPD in 24,399 control patients matched for diagnosis, date, age, and county of residence, during 1995 to 2014. The use of selected prescription opioi…