(© samc - stock.adobe.com)
Researchers warn that opioid epidemic is fueling lethal cases of infective endocarditis in younger adults.
DALLAS — A troubling trend in Americans’ heart health is emerging, and doctors are aiming to bring more awareness to the problem. While death rates from infective endocarditis have generally declined across the U.S. over the past two decades, they have alarmingly increased among young adults aged 25 to 44. This research, published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, underscores a public health issue that intersects with the ongoing opioid crisis.
Infective endocarditis, often referred to as bacterial endocarditis, is a rare but serious condition where bacteria enter the bloodstream and infect the heart lining, valves, or blood vessels. It poses a higher risk to individuals with heart valve abnormalities, previous valve surgeries, artificial valves, congenital heart defects, or a history of the disease. If left untreated, it can lead to severe complications, including heart failure and life-threatening infections. Alarmingly, it can also be a complication arising from the injection of illicit drugs.
Infective Endocarditis Death Rates By Age
The study was conducted Dr. Sudarshan Balla, an associate professor of medicine at the West Virginia University Heart and Vascular Institute. He points out the concerning rise in death rates among young adults, speculating a strong link to the opioid crisis affecting several states. “Our study findings raise a public health concern, especially since the deaths in younger age groups are on the rise,” he says in a statement. “We speculate that this acceleration was likely, in the most part, due to the opioid crisis that has engulfed several states and involved principally younger adults.”
The study utilized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Multiple Cause of Death dataset to analyze national trends and disparities across different demographics from 1999 to 2020. Despite the decline in infective endocarditis death rates overall in the U.S., the data shows a 5% average annual increase in death rates among young adults aged 25-34, and more than 2% for the 35-44 age group.
Stagnant rates were seen in the 45-54 age group, while a decline was seen in adults over 55.
Additionally, the study analyzed state-level trends in death rates, providing insights into regional variations. This approach allowed the researchers to uncover the disproportionate impact of infective endocarditis in certain states and among specific age groups, linking these trends to broader public health issues like the opioid crisis.
Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia exhibited a particularly pronounced increase in death rates due to infective endocarditis. These states, heavily impacted by the opioid epidemic, have seen an increase in injection drug use–related infective endocarditis cases.
The Opioid Crisis Connection
Study results indicate a potential connection between the increase in infective endocarditis deaths among young adults and the opioid epidemic. Substance use disorder, often associated with opioid abuse, emerged as a significant factor in the study, particularly in the states most affected.
The findings of this study are a wake-up call, emphasizing the need for targeted public health interventions, especially in states heavily affected by the opioid crisis. Dr. Balla stresses the need for comprehensive care plans that include screening and treatment for substance use disorder for those treated for infective endocarditis. He also highlights the ongoing efforts in some states to implement harm reduction programs aimed at mitigating the risks associated with intravenous drug use, such as the spread of infectious diseases.
The researchers acknowledge certain limitations due to the reliance on death certificate data, which can sometimes contain inaccuracies. They emphasize the need for further investigation to fully understand the reasons behind these trends among young adults and in specific states.
How To Prevent Infective Endocarditis
Preventing infective endocarditis involves good hygiene, managing existing conditions, and following specific precautions for at-risk procedures. Here are some key tips:
Oral hygiene:
- Maintain excellent oral health: Brush twice daily, floss regularly, and schedule dental checkups every six months. This reduces bacteria in your mouth, minimizing the risk of it entering your bloodstream through gum disease or tooth abscesses.
- Treat dental infections promptly: Address gingivitis, cavities, and other dental issues quickly to prevent bacteria from entering your bloodstream.
General hygiene:
- Practice good handwashing: Wash your hands frequently with soap and water, especially before and after medical procedures, caring for wounds, or touching your face. This helps prevent bacteria from spreading.
- Take care of your skin: Treat cuts, scrapes, and wounds promptly to prevent infection. If you have a chronic skin condition, manage it effectively to lower the risk of bacteria entering your bloodstream.
Managing existing conditions:
- Control heart valve problems: If you have existing heart valve issues, regular monitoring and timely treatment are crucial. Address leaky valves or valve replacements as needed to minimize the risk of bacteria attaching to them.
- Treat ongoing infections: Manage any current infections diligently with antibiotics and follow your doctor’s advice to control the spread of bacteria.
Precautions for at-risk procedures:
- Follow antibiotic prophylaxis guidelines: If you have certain heart conditions, your doctor may recommend taking antibiotics before specific procedures like dental work, urinary tract surgery, or certain respiratory procedures. This helps prevent bacteria from entering your bloodstream during the procedure.
- Talk to your doctor before having piercings or tattoos: If you have a heart condition, discuss piercings or tattoos with your doctor beforehand, as these procedures can introduce bacteria into your bloodstream.
And of course, maintaining good general health goes a long way. Eating a balanced diet, exercising regularly, and getting enough sleep all contribute to a strong immune system, which can help fight off infections. Be cautious about activities that increase your risk of skin or mucous membrane tears, such as sharing needles or using certain types of body-piercing jewelry. As this study shows, substance use certainly can play a key role in the condition.
Remember, while these tips can help prevent infective endocarditis, they are not guaranteed to eliminate the risk entirely. If you experience any symptoms of infective endocarditis, such as fever, chills, fatigue, new heart murmur, or unexplained skin changes, seek immediate medical attention.
It’s important to note that these are general tips, and the specific recommendations for preventing infective endocarditis may vary depending on your individual risk factors and medical history. Always consult your doctor for personalized advice on how to best protect yourself from this serious condition.
“Study Finds” is the Pravda of Amerika
If you’re not saying it’s from the vaccine, then you’re just corporate globalist propaganda
Or, get this, you know how to read. This dataset from 1999-2020 is based on a post-2020 vaccine you say?
Tell me more about this propaganda!
Big Pharma shills and lap dogs (not to mention paid off medical and “media” personnel) want you to believe their B.S. After all, your passing enriches the gubbermit (by stealing your S.S. account) and allowing more qualified illegals to take your place who question less.
Oh goodness you’ll believe anything won’t you?
The data set analyzed is from 1999-2020, pre-COVID or COVID vaccine. The included preventative hygiene advice suggests some covariants that future studies should examine like tattoos and body piercings. This study suggests a possible association with a strong “dose effect” in particularly hard hit states for the opioid epidemic. And there’s a least a plausible infection vector with dirty needles. That doesn’t preclude the possibility that COVID and the COVID vaccines could make things worse. But this study avoids that complication or covariant via the pre-COVID data set.
A well balanced response, not ignoring other posters concerns over obviously omitted possibilities in the study.
With the rise of drug use I agree this is probably true. It’s no secret that drug use, especially intravenously as well as snorting with bloody straws can cause heart infection, but this is still no doubt a smoke screen for all the cardiovascular damage the vaccine has done. The damage done by drug use is just a drop in the bucket compared to the damage done by the MRNA Covid Vaccines. You want to look at data sets? Look at the data for excess deaths from the time the vaccine was rolled out until now. Compared to historic data it’s a 6 sigma event. Look for the data from life insurance company’s, it’s there job to know how long you’ll live, they’ve go skin in the game, as for govt. statistics, buyer beware.
What? That entire post factually and, in a well articulated way, goes against the knee-jerk anti-vax remarks! You must be for “the establishment”… going around posting irrefutable facts and logic like this; are you TRYING to make sense of the presented data instead of using the text book fallacy approach? Sincerely, well done by the way. Thank you for calling out the dataset. It’s about time people read the details instead of making up their own story.
Huh…Everything but……at least one thing, looking at the comments, glad to see others are awake and aware of what’s going on. Now if only more would follow.
“You know it, I know it, everybody knows it”
How about all the younger individuals in similar age ranges dropping dead for heart attacks. Interesting that the article didn’t screen for those with or without the shots. How many druggies are given autopsies?
Now remember to go get your heart attack blood clot booster…. I mean your vaccine booster.
Everything is cyclical, eventually Boomers will pass away and hope will exist for a new generation. I think in a half century things will probably correct themselves. But for the next quarter century especially, there’s just going to be lower birthrates and lower mortality for younger gens. Once the system clears itself out and opportunity exists again, it’ll flip back.
There’s a reason they’re called Baby Boomers—it’s because there was opportunity and life was good so people had a boom in babies. Prior to that were decades of declining birth rates and widespread depression. And yes that means lots of younger people, especially men, simply died. WWII killed off a huge chunk of prime aged men around the world, which opened up opportunities for everyone else.
Where is the raw data analysis that reveals a direct opioid causation? Or is it just some speculative correlation?
Meth and coke are not new. They have been killing people for decades.
The clot shots are new and the death rate has increased since the psyop.
pay no attention to the meth and coke use….it could never be the cause….
Yeah, those soccer players falling over on the pitch need to avoid meth and coke before taking the fiels
So meth and coke use are new? You can deny reality, but you cannot deny the consequences of denying reality. Soon enough, you’ll understand what that truly means.
This country has been doing drugs since the 60’s. The only new scam in the last few years is the jab. The death rate of world class athletes has risen from 3-400 to 3500-4000 a year, I doubt these people are drug addicts. The mandatory jab is the cause. Heart attack rates for women has gone thru the roof in the last few years. Keep your head in the sand, Fauci and big pharma made millions off this scam and killed more people than hitler.
It is not the vaccine stupid.
Vaccines save lives they: vaccines are the main reason our life longevity has increased since their invention.
For example polio is almost extinct.
I’m amazed at the amount of amateur scientist that feel free to expound upon vaccines when they don’t even understand, basic DNA immune response or even blood types.
Covid “vaccine”. Just based on what is publicly available now, we know it’s proven to destroy the immune system defense apparatus while at the same time causing the immune system of the jab victim to attack healthy cells.
The “vaccine” (it is not) hastens everything that can go wrong in a person’s body disease-wise and thus, hastens death. The speed of which the hastening occurs is dictated by the individual’s unique health profile. All a jabbed person can do is try, somehow, to reduce the speed.
Well posted !
Fascinating. How does that change this since all the data used was from before 2020?
Interesting. How did it effect this dataset from 1999-2020? Surely Q gave you an answer for that right?
COVID vaccines unequivocally do *not* “destroy” a person’s immune system. To the contrary, the vaccines enhance the immune system by training it to fight a deadly virus. COVID, on the other hand…
“…hastens everything that can go wrong in a person’s body disease-wise”
That is what I’ve deduced, Olivia. A neighbor who would get occasional one-day bouts of vertigo, descended into *2.5 months* of vertigo after her second jab in early Apr 2021. A friend who is a retired nurse finally concluded that she probably now had fibromyalgia about 3 months after second jab in 2021. Her Doctor concurred and has prescribed meds but, she’s still struggling.
Her cousin, who was totally fine at a 4th of July 2021 family reunion was found a month later slumped over the steering wheel of her car, dead. Family was so stunned, they paid for an autopsy. Result – myocarditis….that has some history in her family line but, she’d had no prior heart issues. The vax may have enhanced her predisposition to it. I have many more stories and I’m sure you’ve heard about recurrence of long-in-remission cancers in people. So, yes, it seems that your weakest physical aspects can be “brought forward” after taking mRNA (non) vaccines.
I asked my doctor about prescribing ivermectin and other prophylactics instead of pushing mRNA shots on patients. I told her that children especially were not at risk of dying from covid. She sat with her head in her hands and repeated 3 times to me “I will loose my job and probably loose my license”. I asked her if any of her young patients were having adverse health because of the shots and she replied “Yes, we are treating some people for that now”. I left her office and have never spoken to her again. These so called healthcare professionals are nothing but criminals.
“You’re a real cowboy, ain’tcha?” (movie reference)
Olivia, you seem to know your s**t because THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT IS HAPPENING. What you wrote is accurate and very succinctly put. When these health event and death numbers go to concernedly high levels and they DO NOT even mention the experimental RNA instruction that causes the spike replica to be created within the body…. there’s something sinister and wrong.
Dion and the Belmonts won’t be singing “I Wonder Why” over this.
This has absolutely , positively and Completely NOTHING to do with the Clot Shots ……
Right ?
Oh of courrrrrse not. Why that would be,,, uh,, ridiculous???? wink wink. But thats from Justme2u4ever….
Between 1999 and 2020 are you dumb enough to believe it was from a vaccine that came after? Please explain.
Dont fudge pack.
Nuremberg II time.
Opioids? Lol it’s the vax and you know it
None dare mention the REAL CAUSE – The VAXXX!
We Both Know it !
Brought to you by Pfizer
paranoia runs deep…..into your life it will creep…..
that song wasnt even good in the 60s
and the vax is **** also
Interesting that the states with the highest endocarditis rates (solid red KY,WV,TN) also have some of the lowest COVID vaccination rates in the country.
Does that mean failure to vaccinate causes endocarditis?
I’m inclined to blame the high opioid use in those Republican states instead of the low vax rates, but who knows? Either way, MAGAs preferring to inject dope rather than vax are having heart problems ????????????
“I’m waiting for the man, $25 in my hand..”
Do a dance, in denial, while all the people fall down dead!
LOL! You go ahead an believe that taking some pain pills leads to “heart inflammation!”
This really is a new low…
Especially when your government is trying to kill you.
So what do you credit for this increase? Please include your citations from peer reviewed articles.
It is not paranoia if they are actually after you.
Yes, you are right. Young people lately have not been flossing or washing their hands. That is the culprit. No doubt. It definitely DEFINITELY is not the obvious thing.
Look how Commies run from the truth.
Because of covid vaccine.
The vaccines weren’t released until December 2020 and they were initially only given to older or at risk people. The study used data from 2019 and 2020 so it literally has NOTHING to do with the vaccines.
The article lists conditions that can make a person susceptible to IE, but fails to mention myo- or pericarditis. What are the chances that those conditions don’t contribute to susceptibility? Hazard a guess why they might not be on the list?
Of course, this article says nothing about how an actual association with drug abuse was made, is seems the statistics derived from the general population. I have to wonder how the vaxxes would stack up in a similar comparison (the method for which is acceptable when blaming drugs, but which would draw immediate objection if the correlation was with vaccination. Of course, it could be possible that IE is occurring largely in the population of opioid abusers, but have vaccine adverse effects been ruled out as a contributing factor? Probably not. Ignoring the 800 lb gorilla in the room.
Pardon me sir, but the educated folk who have basic knowledge of biology find your ignorance to be amusing and sad at the same time.
The vaccine was killing people in 1999? My god what have you uncovered?!
This is only going to get worse as SPIKE PROTEIN CONTINUES TO DAMAGE THE VAXXED POPULATION!
You’re right on! Gullibility runs deep in those who have fallen for lie after lie and hoax after hoax for almost a decade now. All one (with an IQ above 70, that is) must do is stop watching CNN or MSNBC and pay attention to the facts. The little prick, Fauci, has gotten rich by directly causing enormous misery and death on the people of the world. Mental deficients, such as the rotor head, who ignore and obey have always helped to usher in tyrants and authoritarian governments throughout history.
Actually Trump is responsible Operation Warp Speed May, 2020. Fauci had no authority Biden wasn’t elected yet..only one man could legalize Covid Vaccine and give cover to Vaccine manufacturers Moderna, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson. President Donald J Trump and in 2024 He is coming back to finish the job.
Precisely. Covidiots.
I just laughed at that sawed off POS!
Oh, Lex. You honestly believe that an mRNA-based viral vaccine causes a bacterial infection?
Absolutely that is what it is.
Jab
I was waiting to at least see a mention of “some mysterious traces of spike proteins were seen, also attributed to opioid use.”
Baffled Medical Authorities, Look No further than the “Helpful” Vaccination and Booster shots !!!….We Know it , the WHO knows it, Medical Professional’s Know it ( appears to be a common denominator) possibly, Money but probably “Intimidation” ???
You didn’t even read past the headline, did you!!!??
This has nothing to do with Covid or vaccines. It has to do with opioid use!
If it had ANYTHING to do with the vaxx, don’t you think the most vaccinated groups would be the most affected?
Nope, not the case…
“Stagnant rates were seen in the 45-54 age group, while a decline was seen in adults over 55.”
Get yer head outta your vaxx terrified A$$!
We (people with normal functioning brains) know why this is happening and have yelled it everywhere and there will be a reckoning.
shame i cant share this as it needs to be shared
Bingo!
BINGO
Not allowed they are still getting to much ad money for the vax .