[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Two drugs prescribed to millions of Americans could have deadly effects when taken together, doctors warn.
People prescribed both opioid painkillers and benzodiazepines such as Xanax have a 71 percent increased risk of dying from any cause, according to a new study.
Both classes of the drugs slow a person's breathing and taking them at the same time, a combination that led to the deaths of actors Heath Ledger and Philip Seymour Hoffman, raises the risk of lowering respiration so severely that a person completely stops breathing.
The new report - which looked at veterans affairs records - found patients were also 42 percent more likely to die by suicide.
Despite the heightened risks, researchers found, despite the known risks of taking both classes of drugs, 27 percent of veterans taking opioids were also given benzodiazepines.
According to the CDC, about 125million opioid prescriptions were dispensed to Americans in 2023 and the FDA reports approximately 92million benzodiazepine prescriptions were dispensed in the US in 2019 - the latest data the agency has available.
And in 2021, nearly 14 percent of all overdose deaths involving opioids also involved benzodiazepines, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
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