Opioid and benzodiazepine dispensing and co-dispensing patterns among commercially insured pregnant women in the United States, 2007–2015

Little is known about benzodiazepine and opioid-benzodiazepine co-dispensing patterns among pregnant women. Understanding these patterns is necessary to mitigate high-risk medication use during pregnancy. Our objective in this analysis was to evaluate opioid and benzodiazepine dispensing and co-dispensing patterns among commercially insured pregnant women in the United States.

This retrospective study used a 10% random sample of commercially insured enrollees from the IQVIA™ Adjudicated Health Plan Claims Data from 2007 to 2015. The study included women (12–55 years of age) with completed pregnancies who had continuous medical and prescription drug coverage from 3 months prior to the date of conception through 3 months post-delivery. We estimated the prevalence of opioid and benzodiazepine dispensing and co-dispensing before, during, and after pregnancy, and evaluated trends in dispensing patterns across the study period (2007–2015) using Cochrane-Armitage tests. Chi-square tests were used to examine differences in demographic and clinical characteristics by dispensing and co-dispensing patterns. Among women that received an opioid or benzodiazepine during pregnancy, logistic regression models were used to quantify the association between sample characteristics and dispensing patterns (co-dispensing vs single dispensing).

Of 168,025 pregnant women that met our inclusion criteria, 10.1% received at least one opioid and 2.0% received at least one benzodiazepine during pregnancy, while 0.5% were co-dispensed these drugs. During the study period (2007 vs 2015), prevalence of opioid dispensing during pregnancy decreased from 11.2 to 8.6% (p <  0.01); while benzodiazepine dispensing increased from 1.3 to 2.9% (p <  0.01), and the prevalence of co-dispensing, while low and stable, increased slightly from 0.39 to 0.44% (p <  0.01). Older age, a higher comorbidity burden, pain diagnosis, anxiety diagnosis, and alcohol, tobacco, and drug use disorders, were all associated with an increased odds of co-dispensing during pregnancy.

This study provides evidence that while opioid dispensing during pregnancy has decreased in the past decade, benzodiazepine dispensing has increased. The prevalence of opioid-benzodiazepine co-dispensing was rare and remained fairly stable during our study period. Those co-dispensed both drugs had a higher prevalence of adverse birth outcomes. Further research to establish the potentially causal relationship between opioid and benzodiazepine co-dispensing and adverse birth outcomes should be undertaken.