Risk Factors for Misuse of Prescribed Opioids: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Abstract

Study objective: Increasing opioid prescribing has been linked to an epidemic of opioid misuse. Our objective is to synthesize the available evidence about patient-, prescriber-, medication-, and system-level risk factors for developing misuse among patients prescribed opioids for noncancer pain.

Methods: We performed a systematic search of the scientific and gray literature for studies reporting on risk factors for prescription opioid misuse. Two reviewers independently reviewed titles, abstracts, and full texts; extracted data; and assessed study quality. We excluded studies with greater than 50% cancer patients, palliative patients, and illicit opioid initiation. When possible, we synthesized the effect sizes of dichotomous risk factors and their associations with opioid misuse, using inverse-variance random-effects meta-analysis. We calculated the mean difference between opioid misusers and nonmisusers for continuous risk factors. When studies lacked homogeneity, we synthesized their results qualitatively.

Results: Of 9,629 studies, 65 met our inclusion criteria. Among patients with outpatient opioid prescriptions, the following factors were associated with the development of misuse: any current or previous substance use (odds ratio [OR] 3.55; 95% confidence interval [CI] 2.62 to 4.82), any mental health diagnosis (OR 2.45; 95% CI 1.91 to 3.15), younger age (OR 2.19; 95% CI 1.81 to 2.64), and male sex (OR 1.23; 95% CI 1.10 to 1.36).

Conclusion: Although clinicians should endeavor to offer alternative pain management strategies to all patients, those who are younger, are male patients, and report a history of or current substance use or mental health diagnoses were associated with a greater risk of developing opioid misuse. Clinicians should consider prioritizing alternative pain management strategies for these higher-risk patients.