1 addict is born each hour in US

01:43 1 addict is born each hour in US 0 Comments

An increased reliance on prescription painkillers and the resulting addiction has now shown up in the most vulnerable patients — America’s newborns, according to a report released Monday. Addicted babies — many suffering from respiratory problems, low-birth weight and seizures — have nearly tripled in less than a decade. That’s one baby every hour in the U.S., according to the study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, said Dr. Stephen Patrick, lead author and doctor at the University of Michigan Medical Center’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Meanwhile, the number of mothers using opiates has increased five-fold, according to the same study. It’s also a burden on public health dollars — and a wake-up call about the need for better prevention, Patrick said. “Instead of a burden … I like to think about as an incentive to do something about it,” he said. Average costs to care for the babies suffering from neonatal abstinence syndrome, or NAS, skyrocketed from $39,400 to $53,400 between the same time period — 2000 to 2009, according to the study.