Heart infection hospitalizations are skyrocketing among white young adults, inpatient data shows.
Another ripple effect of the country's opioid drug problem is emerging: There has been significant rise in hospitalizations for infective endocarditis, a heart valve infection often attributed to injection drug use.
That increase is especially pronounced among young, white adults.
Infective endocarditis is a sometimes lethal infection of the heart valves, and while some cases are related to things like congenital defects, the infection can also come from injection drug use, which can introduce bacteria into the blood stream.
Injection drug use-related infective endocarditis (IDU-IE) represented about 12% of all infective endocarditis hospitalizations in the United States in 2013, according to a study by Tufts Medical Center and Tufts University School of Medicine, published in Open Forum Infectious Diseases.
That's up significantly from just 7% in 2000. The increase represents an estimated growth from 3,578 cases in 2000 to 8,530 in 2013. The rise is especially dramatic among young people, whites, and females, the researchers found.
People age 15 to 34 accounted for 28% of all IDU-IE cases in 2000, but the proportion grew to 42% in 2013.
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White patients represented 40% of all IDU-IE hospitalizations in 2000, and that number increased to 69% in 2013. The trend was magnified among white young adults, growing in proportion from 57% to 80%.
Females represented 41% of all IDU-IE hospitalizations in 2013, but they accounted for 53% of 15- to 34-year-olds hospitalized for IDU-IE, the study showed.
"As clinicians, we have observed a major increase in young people with opioid addiction cycling in and out of the healthcare system, and many end up with devastating complications of injection drug use like infective endocarditis," first author Alysse Wurcel, MD, said in a statement.
"Our study confirms that this trend is increasing across the U.S. and represents yet another indicator of the challenges we face with the national opioid epidemic."
The researchers analyzed data from the Health Care and Utilization Project's Nationwide Inpatient Sample data set for 2000 to 2013.
They excluded infective endocarditis cases linked to congenital defects, and included cases of reported drug use and young patients with hepatitis C, which is a strong indicator of injection drug use.