There is wide variation between states in the prescription of benzodiazepines, with rates highest in the South and lowest in the West, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.
The overall prescribing rate for benzodiazepines in the South for 2012 was 43.1/100 persons – 54% higher than the West’s 27.9/100. Like the South, prescribing rates in the Midwest (38.2/100) and the Northeast (38.1/100) were both above the national rate of 37.6/100 persons, according to the CDC (MMWR 2014 July 1;63:1-6).
Among individual states, West Virginia’s U.S.-high rate of 71.9/100 was 3.7-fold higher than Hawaii’s low of 19.3/100. West Virginia was even one standard deviation above the states with the next-highest rates: Alabama (61.9), Tennessee (61.4), and Rhode Island (60.2), the analysis showed.
"Previous studies have found that regional prescribing variation cannot be explained by variation in the prevalence of the conditions treated by these drugs," the investigators noted.
The analysis was based on a sample of approximately 57,000 pharmacies from IMS Health’s National Prescription Audit that "dispense nearly 80% of the retail prescriptions in the United States," they wrote.