According to a new study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, more people than ever are passing away as a consequence of accidental drug overdoses. These are being caused by combining prescription medications with street drugs and alcohol.

As shown by the most recent study carried out by University of California, San Diego, people mixing medications at home with alcohol or street drugs, or with both of them, explained an estimated 17% of the deadly errors in 2004. Since 1983, the figure alarmingly rose from 2.3%, said researchers after looking at U.S. death certificates.

David P. Phillips, the leader of the study and a professor of sociology at the university, said in a telephone interview that the increase in accidental deaths causally connected to drug errors happened because drug intake has progressively shifted from residences to hospitals and clinics.

The patient is more frequently “put in charge of quality control rather than medical staff, and some patients aren't up to it,'' Phillips stated. “We haven't been sufficiently aware that some patients cannot follow directions as scrupulously as nurses or physicians.''

Researchers’ recommendation is to increase screening for patient abuse of prescription drugs, alcohol, or street drugs, on top of increasing caution toward prescribing medicines which present known hazardous interactions with alcohol or street drugs.

According to the abovementioned study, the toll of deaths that have been caused by the combination of medications with alcohol or street drugs, or both, increased to 3,792 in the home in 2004 from 92 in 1983.