Comparing Medical Comorbidities Between Opioid and Cocaine Users: A Data Mining Approach

Abstract

<span><strong>Background: </strong><span>Prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs) are instrumental in controlling opioid misuse,<br /><span>but opioid users have increasingly shifted to cocaine, creating a different set of medical problems. While<br /><span>opioid use results in multiple medical comorbidities, findings of the existing studies reported single<br /><span>comorbidities rather than a set, and furthermore, those findings are often conflicting because of the lack of<br /><span>controlling for other substances in the analysis when combined use of substance creates synergistic effects.<br /><span>On the other hand, the findings from cocaine use are mainly related to kidney and heart problems, which lack<br /><span>specificity. Because medical comorbidities from opioid and cocaine use are very different, it is imperative to<br /><span>investigate medical comorbidities from opioids and cocaine in order to minimize negative effects from<br /><span>PDMPs. Therefore, this study attempts to discover sets of medical comorbidities from opioid and cocaine use<br /><span>by controlling for other substances in the analysis.<br /><span><strong>Methods: </strong><span>A data mining technique, association rule mining algorithm, was employed to discover sets of<br /><span>medical comorbidities using electronic medical records. This method is ideal to discover co-occurring<br /><span>medical comorbidities.<br /><span><strong>Findings: </strong><span>Opioid use was associated with a set of [high diastolic blood pressure (DBP), abnormal specific<br /><span>gravity], [high body mass index (BMI), low blood gas] among others. Cocaine use correlated with [high<br /><span>creatine kinase (CK), high blood urea nitrogen (BUN)], [high CK, cardiopulmonary] among others.<br /><span><strong>Conclusion: </strong><span>The findings of this study addresses some of the conflicting findings by eliminating multidrug<br /><span>and reports sets of medical comorbidities from opioid and cocaine use</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br /><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /></span></span></span></span></span>