Aileen Dannelley holds her baby, Savannah, at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, Ill. The one-month-old baby is being treated with methadone for withdrawal while she and her mother both fight addiction to powerful prescription painkillers.
APRichard J. Brennan Staff Reporter
University of Michigan researchers have made the startling discovery that about one child is born every hour in the U.S. addicted to opiate drugs.
Opiate drugs include methadone, heroin, OxyContin and Vicodin.
“This calls for immediate attention. . . it calls for a public health intervention at the state and national levels,†said Dr. Stephen W. Patrick, lead author of the 10-year study..
In the research published April 30 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, physicians found that drug withdrawal syndrome among newborns, almost tripled between 2000 and 2009.
By 2009, there was an estimated 13,539 newborns with the syndrome or about one baby born each hour, according to the study assessing national trends in neonatal abstinence syndrome and mothers using opiate drugs.
The Canadian Institute for Health Information reported in 2009-10 that there were 1,057 newborns with neonatal withdrawal syndrome, with Ontario recording 491.
“We found that the diagnosis of drug withdrawal with newborns grew by three fold reaching more than 13,000 in 2009. We know that while newborns can withdraw from a few different drugs the most common are opiates,†Patrick said on the Michigan study.
Over the last decade sales for opiate pain relievers like OxyContin and Vicodin and deaths attributed to opiate pain relievers have quadrupled reported the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Patrick.
“We weren’t able to pull out the exact opiates they (mothers) were using but it can mean OxyContin but it could also mean heroin, it could also mean Methadone. There are a lot of different opiates out there,†he said.
Patrick told the Star that newborns can start showing signs of withdrawal within one day.
“What they experience is extreme inconsolability, irritability, feeding problems, sometimes breathing problems and rare they also have seizures,†he said.
“You can often stand in the hallway and know which babies are experiencing withdrawal. They are irritable, their cries are different, and they appear uncomfortable.â€
Patrick said it remains to be seen what the long-term effects are.
According to the study, the majority of the mothers of babies born with the syndrome were covered by insurance provider Medicaid for health care costs. The average hospital bill for babies with the syndrome increased from $39,400 in 2000 to $53,400 in 2009, a 35 per cent increase. By 2009, 77.6 per cent of charges for babies with the syndrome were charged to Medicaid.
“We estimated the national hospital bill for caring for these babies went from $190 million to $720 million and most of that is attributed to the state Medicaid program, about 80 per cent of it. So this is extra incentive for states to be innovative in finding ways to work toward fixing this problem,†Patrick said.
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