People aged 45-54 years had the highest rate of opioid-analgesic poisoning deaths in the United States in 2011, while people aged 55-64 years experienced the largest rise in deaths from opioid analgesics from 1999 to 2011, according to a report from the National Center for Health Statistics.
In 1999, the death rate for opioid analgesics was 1 per 100,000 people for adults aged 55-64 years. By 2011, this rate had increased to 6.3 per 100,000 people. This was the fourth-highest rate overall among reported age groups, with adults aged 45-54, 35-44, and 25-34 having higher rates, and people aged 15-24 and 65 and older having lower rates. The rate of increase slowed for all groups after 2006, except for people aged 15-24, whose death rate from opioid analgesics did not change significantly from 2006 to 2011, the NCHS reported.
![[DW] Opioid-analgesic poisoning death rates by age, 1999-2011](https://cdn.mdedge.com/files/s3fs-public/Image/September-2017/RTEmagicC_51332be_105473_graphic.png.png)
[DW] Opioid-analgesic poisoning death rates by age, 1999-2011
Non-Hispanic white adults had the largest increase in the rate of opioid-analgesic poisoning deaths among measured ethnicities, rising from 1.6 per 100,000 in 1999 to 7.3 in 2011. The death rate for non-Hispanic black adults increased from 0.9 per 100,000 in 1999 to 2.3 in 2011. Hispanic adults did not see a large rate increase, with 1.7 per 100,000 deaths in 1999 and 2 per 100,000 deaths in 2011 attributed to opioid-analgesic poisoning, according to data from the National Vital Statistics System.