Overdoses of drugs, particularly prescription pain-killers and heroin, have overtaken AIDS to become the leading cause of death for homeless adults, researchers have found.
The findings came from a five-year study of that tracked 28,033 homeless adults receiving treatment from the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program. But the conclusions apply to homeless populations in many urban parts of the United States, the study’s author and homeless advocates told Reuters News.
A steep increase in the rate of drug overdose deaths reflects an overall rise in pain-killer abuse, said Dr. Travis Baggett of Massachusetts General Hospital, the lead author of the study.
“This trend is happening across the country, in non-homeless populations too,” Baggett told Reuters. “Homeless people tend to experience in a magnified way the health issues that are going on in the general population.” The decline in AIDS-related deaths reflected decreasing infection rates and improved care and services for patients since a prior study.
Of those who died, 17 percent died of drug overdoses, while 6 percent died of causes related to HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Cancer and heart disease each accounted for about 16 percent of the deaths.
Homeless people are significantly more likely to die in a given year than their peers in the rest of the population, with those aged 25 to 44 nine times more likely, and those aged 45 to 64 four-and-a-half times more likely to die, the study said.
