Monitoring of benzodiazepine diversion using a multi-indicator approach

• Published in: International clinical psychopharmacology Vol. 26; no. 5; p. 268
• Main Authors: Pauly, Vanessa, Frauger, Elisabeth, Pradel, Vincent, Nordmann, Sandra, Pourcel, Laure, Natali, Francois, Sciortino, Vincent, Lapeyre-Mestre, Maryse, Micallef, Joelle, Thirion, Xavier
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England 01.09.2011
• Subjects: Benzodiazepines - therapeutic use; Clonazepam - therapeutic use; Cross-Sectional Studies; Data Collection - methods; Data Collection - trends; Databases, Factual - trends; Diazepam - therapeutic use; Flunitrazepam - therapeutic use; Humans; Prescription Drugs - therapeutic use; Principal Component Analysis; Substance-Related Disorders - diagnosis; Substance-Related Disorders - epidemiology
• ISSN: 1473-5857
• DOI: 10.1097/YIC.0b013e32834967e5

Fourteen benzodiazepine (BZD) or BZD-like medications were analyzed with three data sources aiming to assess prescription drug abuse for the year 2008. After a descriptive analysis, a principal component analysis was carried out to explore correlations between seven indicators obtained by different methods using these three different data sources and to compute a composite score of diversion for these drugs. For all the indicators, flunitrazepam appears first with much higher values than the other drugs, whereas clonazepam appears in the second or third place. These methods produce globally correlated indicators and the composite score obtained from principal component analysis ranks the drugs with the highest diversion as follows: flunitrazepam, clonazepam, oxazepam, diazepam, and bromazepam. This study shows that these methods yield consistent results. Their integration into a single multi-indicator approach gives health authorities a global view of different behaviors regarding diversion of a given drug.