研究发现：互联网普及与处方药滥用呈正相关

Could increasing Internet use help explain the recent surge in prescription drug misuse in the US? That's the hypothesis put forth by a new study published in Health Affairs。

Between 1997 and 2007, Americans' household access to the Internet went from 18 percent to 61 percent; between 1999 and 2003, online sales of prescription drugs grew from $160 million to $3.2 billion。

In the new study, researchers compared states' growth in high-speed Internet access with their rates of admission to rehabs for problems associated with prescription drugs。

"In general, for every 10 percent increase in Internet use, what we're seeing is a one percent increase in admission to treatment facilities for the most commonly prescribed drugs, things like painkillers and stimulants," says lead author Dana Goldman at the University of Southern California。

Dana thinks the link is likely to be causal. "One of the things that gives me a lot confidence in that is that we looked at the relationships with drugs that you can't really get on Internet like heroin. When you replicate the [findings] using heroin, you don't find any association [with increased Internet use] and the same is true with cocaine and alcohol," Dana says。在美国，互联网使用和处方药滥用呈正相关？《卫生事务》刊登的一项最新研究提出了这一假设。

1997年至2007年间，美国家庭上网率从18%升至61%，而从1999年到2003年，在线非处方药的销售额从1亿6千万美元增长值32亿美元。

研究中，研究人员将互联网的快速普及同提供处方药解决相关疾病的在线网点登录比率做了比较。

“总体来说，互联网使用每扩大10%，可提供最常见处方药(如止痛剂和兴奋剂)的网点登陆比率就增加了1%，”来自男加利福尼亚大学的首席研究人员丹娜说道。

丹娜认为这种联系并非偶然。“这当中有一点让我信心百倍，那就是我们研究了一些人们无法在网上买到的药品同社会的关系，比如海洛因。当把实验对象换成海洛因重新研究时，我们并没有发现互联网普及和海洛因使用有什么关联，这种不相关对于可卡因和酒精同样适用，”丹娜说道。