Between 2018 and 2022, 295 infants died from exposure to drugs or abuse by a caregiver who was impaired by drugs, and the percentage of such deaths increased by 120%. During this period, drug-involved infant deaths accounted for 1.18% of all infant deaths, nearly double the 0.64% share reported for 2015 to 2017.
The percentage of drug-involved infant deaths rose from 10.8% of infant deaths in 2018 to 24.4% in 2022. Relative to all other causes of infant mortality, the prevalence of drug-involved deaths began rising in 2019 when 16.9% of infant deaths were considered drug-involved.
About 81.4% of child deaths considered drug-involved took place when the child was between 28 days and 364 days old. About 34.6% of child deaths from other causes were during the first year of life.
Drug-related causes included assault (homicide) by drugs, medicaments and biological substances (35.6 %) followed by poisoning due to exposure to narcotics and hallucinogens (15.6 %). The most common multiple causes of drug-involved infant deaths were psychostimulants with abuse potential or synthetic narcotics. For 10.8% of deaths, the child was accidentally poisoned by exposure to antiepileptic, sedative-hypnotic, anti-parkinsonism, and psychotropic drugs.
These findings were reported in “Increases In Drug-Related Infant Mortality In The United States” by Panagiota Kitsantas, Sebastian Densley, Meera Rao, and colleagues. The researchers analyzed data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research (WONDER) database.
For more information, contact: Panagiota “Yiota” Kitsantas, Ph.D., Professor and Chair, Department of Population Health and Social Medicine, FAU Schmidt College of Medicine, 777 Glades Road, BC 71, Room 337, Boca Raton, Florida 33431; Email: pkitsanta@health.fau.edu; Website: https://www.fau.edu/medicine/directory/yiota-kitsantas/