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Over 5.3 million people in the UK are prescribed opioids every year while 40 on average die each week from opioid-related causes, new research has revealed.

A report published by the pain relief brand Combogesic, based on a study carried out by York Health Economics Consortium, shone light on the “worrying scale of the country's growing opioid crisis”.

It said opioid prescribing was estimated to place a £1.17 billion burden on the UK economy "in direct healthcare costs and wider societal impacts" while "prescriptions for opioid medicines account for the largest proportion of this burden - £447 million".

Unnecessary opioid prescribing was found to cost the NHS about £240 million annually. The report said a "two-week opioid prescribing reduction would save the NHS £24 million annually". The research identified three factors driving pain; an ageing population, rising obesity rates and increasingly sedentary lifestyles.

Mark Burdon, a pharmacist and the co-author of the report, The True Cost of the Pain Epidemic. Mapping Pain and the Opioid Crisis, said there was “still a long way to go in terms of reducing prescriptions and purchases of these habit-forming medicines” despite “lots of progress in tackling the opioid epidemic”.

“We need to find better ways to manage pain and to support patients who have become dependent on opioid-based painkillers,” added Burdon, who is also an adviser to Combogesic.

The report cites NHS data showing 13 per cent of the adult population in England were being prescribed an opioid pain medicine by 2019. The report also said 53 per cent of GPs in the UK “agree there is an opioid crisis” in the country.

“Using opioids for three months or more carries a high risk of addiction, particularly if there is a history of poor mental health or misuse of alcohol or other substances,” Burdon said.

“When patients then try to come off opioids, they may experience unpleasant side effects such as body aches, more pain, sweating, nausea, a rise in blood pressure and a higher heart rate.”

The research also revealed two out of five people experience pain on a daily basis and 84 per cent report mild-to moderate discomfort.

“A reduction in opioid use could be achieved by encouraging the greater use of a combined dose of 500mg of paracetamol and 150mg ibuprofen, which Combogesic provides,” the report said.

It warned it was “common for patients to develop a tolerance to opioids and require increasing doses to achieve the same level of symptom relief they experienced initially”.

Leading figures in pharmacy, notably Hemant Patel, the former president of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, believe deprescribing is an effective way to tackle inappropriate polypharmacy. 

Last month, a Times investigation found “an over-prescribing epidemic” was sending around 1,000 elderly people to A&E every day in England. About eight million people in the UK take five or more medicines a day while 2.2 million take 10 or more medicines.