Abstract
This is about dogs, but there are human implications — read on. Small size, youth, not being neutered or living in a county with a high opioid prescription rate are associated with a higher risk of someone calling a poison control center about a dog's accidental opioid poisoning. Researchers analyzed 189,594 phone calls made to the Animal Poison Control Center (operated by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) between 2006 and 2014. They also found that calls were more likely to be made by a veterinarian than anyone else, including the owner. Possible explanations suggested by the researchers include this interesting concept: Owners who neuter their dogs have different drug‐use habits than those who do not neuter. The researchers also looked at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, noting that where there are more opioids per capita there were higher odds of opioid poisoning in dogs being reported. “This might suggest a possible ‘spill‐over’ effect of human opioid use on pet dogs, but alternative hypotheses concerning pet owner reporting behaviour need to be considered,” they conclude. The likelihood of a call being related to opioid poisoning went down significantly from 2008 to 2014, the study, published in PLOS ONE last month, found. (For the abstract, go to https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31995582).
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