PainRelief.com Interview with:
Maaz Siddiqui, BS
Department of Medical Education
Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine
Scranton, Pennsylvania

PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study?

Response: Over the last twenty years, the rise of deaths due to drug overdoses have been mainly and rightfully attributed to opioids. However, many investigations identify non-opioid drugs and drug classes that additionally contribute to deaths due to polysubstance overdoses. Through the Maine Diversion Alert Program (DAP) data, we examined drugs that often escape the attention of healthcare providers and directly or indirectly contribute to substance misuse, arrests, addiction, and deaths due to overdose.

The goal of this study was to utilize a novel dataset to uncover and identify the noncontrolled drugs that have shown potential to be misused.