How to calculate analgesic abuse ?

[Bshoora]

I'm doing a research on a small community on analgesic abuse, and I'm trying to calculate the number of pills that would lead to an abuse.

I did a little search on the internet and I found that analgesic abuse was defined as cumulative lifetime use of >5000 pills, as I understood, basically you need to find the product of the average number of pills consumed in a week by duration of use in years, witch did'nt make much sense to me because if there is someone who's 45 years old and he's been taking analgesics for about 25 years 8 pills per weak he's considered abusive, but if there is another person who's 25 years old and he's been taking analgesics for 5 years in a rate of 8 pills per weak he's not an abusive !

I don't know If I didn't understand the cumulative life does equation right or it just don't work in this case .
if there is another way to calculate the abuse of analgesics please help me with it :)

[Buenchico]

Does this help?

"It remains uncertain which analgesic or combination of analgesics is responsible for renal damage in man. For this reason it is difficult to define analgesic abuse accurately, but most authors accept the definition proposed by Schreiner: the ingestion of at least 1 kg. of phenacetin and/or salicylate over any period of time. This implies the daily consumption of four to six tablets of analgesic compounds for over three years, but many patients consume many times this amount".
Adam L Linton, 'Recognition of the Problem of Analgesic Nephropathy', Canadian Medical Association Journal Vol.107, Ottowa, October 1972
- citing -
G E Schreiner, 'Definition of Analgesic Abuse', [p.347 'Progress in Pyelonephritis' (Ed. E H Kass)], pub F A Davis, Philadelphia, 1965

Sourced from here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.n...anmedaj01654-0045.pdf

Chris

[boxtops]

There was an interesting piece of research issued only a few days ago about cumulative use of paracetamol in long term takers, I'll try to find it.

[boxtops]

Here it is http://www.pjonline.c..._than_single_overdose

The problem is that taking daily analgesia (unless taken under supervision of a GP or other medical person) can lead to a spiral, so you then enter the Chronic Daily Headache arena, where you carry on taking the tablets to try to get rid of the headache - which is caused by trying not to take the tablets, because your body is too used to them.