Substance abuse medications:Trends and prescribing patterns by physician specialty

Recently, several new medications have been approved to treat substance abuse conditions. This presentation will describe data on retail prescribing trends of medications whose primary indication is for substance abuse treatment (e.g., alcoholism, opioid abuse). The medications include three to treat alcoholism: disulfiram (antabuse), naltrexone, acamprosate (Campral) and two to treat opioid addiction buprenorphine hydrochloride/naloxone hydrocloride (Suboxone) and buprenorphine hydrochloride (Subutex). This study is based on data from IMS' National Prescription Audit (NPA) PlusTM database of retail pharmacy transactions. The NPA Plus consists of transaction records from retail pharmacies, including those at chain, independent, food store and mass merchandiser pharmacy retail outlets which, when weighted, represent all prescriptions filled in retail outlets in the United States. We will present trends in prescribing such as information on the number of prescriptions of each medication per year. We will also examine prescribing by medical specialty (e.g., primary care physicians and psychiatrists). Questions that will be answered include: “How have new medications to treat alcoholism and opioid addiction diffused? Have new alcoholism mediations replaced older medications or added to overall use? Which types of specialists are adopting new mediations the fastest? How does the rate of use of substance abuse medications compare to medications to treatment other psychiatric illnesses such as depression.