TDAI core faculty member contributes to major study of illicit fentanyl use in the U.S.
A new study led by Ohio State researchers found that illicit fentanyl use is more than twice as common as medically based use in the United States and is associated with a substantially higher risk of harmful opioid-related outcomes.
The study analyzed electronic health records for nearly 300,000 patients screened for fentanyl exposure between 2015 and 2023. Researchers classified 71.1% of the study population as illicit-source fentanyl users, compared with 28.9% whose exposure originated from a medical setting or prescription.
Illicit-source fentanyl initiation was associated with a two- to three-fold higher risk of nonfatal overdose, misuse and dependence within 30 days compared with medical-source initiation. The analysis also found that Ohio had the highest proportion of illicit-source fentanyl users among all states represented in the study.
“Finding that illicit use has reached 70% among all fentanyl users is a surprise,” said co-lead author Ping Zhang, professor of computer science and engineering and biomedical informatics and a core faculty member in Ohio State’s Translational Data Analytics Institute. “To make something that’s been a black hole visible to the healthcare system is significant.”
The research was published Aug. 14 in eClinicalMedicine and was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the U.S. National Science Foundation.