Effects of Adjuncts on Opioids

Opioids are used to treat chronic pain due to their effectiveness but can be very harmful and addictive. One way that the negative side effects of opioids can be avoided is by taking an adjunct drug alongside the opioid. Certain adjuncts greatly decrease the severity of opioids, but there is an underwhelming amount of research on the topic. We have analyzed over 135 million records from the FDA's FAERS dataset, which records adverse drug events. After cleaning and formatting the FAERS database, we checked for outcomes of opioid usage and compared it to adjunct opioid combinations. Some adjuncts significantly lowered severity in certain opioids, whereas others made the effects more severe. For example, adding Diazepam to Methadone lowered severity percentage by 11.82%, while the addition of Diazepam to Oxycodone increased the death rate by 36.96%. We also found that adding Bupivacaine to Fentanyl lowers death rate from 43.2% to 6.21%