The Treated Drug Users in the Slovak Republic.

Dear Editor-in-Chief

Drug craving and the other compulsive behaviours are the essences of addiction. People who abuse substances are likely to find themselves increasingly isolated from their families. Several drug abuse studies have been conducted (1–3).

The aim of this study was to analyse of treated drug users in the Slovak Republic in the period 2006–2015. We conducted a descriptive analysis the treatments for drug abuse were obtained from the National Health Information Centre of the Slovak Republic (4).

Data were transformed to relative percentage annual difference and averaged, thus we are so called mean percentage difference (MPD) characteristic of annual growth consumption of medicaments, formally

Where represents input vector of patients treated drug abuse with period in years .

In 2015, 2720 patients underwent treatment for the use of illegal drugs in the Slovak Republic (84% males; 50.1 persons treated per 100000 inhabitants) (4).

In the period 2006–2015, the highest increase of MPD was in treated users in the category other drugs (males: MPD 20.1%; females MPD 27.4%) with a significant decrease for male users of injectable substances (MPD −6.1%) and female users of heroin (MPD −4.6%) (Table 1). The highest MPD was observed in males being treated for drug use in the age group 40–44 yr (23.0%) and in women in the age group 45–49 yr (MPD 15.6%) (Table 2).

Table 1:

Treated drug users according to the type of drug and gender per 100000 inhabitants, 2006–2015

Year	Gender	Type of Drugs
		Heroin	Other types of drugs	Cocaine	Stimulants	Injectable substances	Cannabis
2006	Male	22.1	1.8	0.7	12.9	3.6	10.4
	Female	6.3	0.5	0.1	3.5	0.5	1.4
2007	Male	20.2	4.2	0.3	14.5	3.6	11.2
	Female	5.9	0.8	0.1	3.6	0.3	1.0
2008	Male	21.6	3.5	0.3	17.3	3.0	11.0
	Female	6.5	0.5	0.1	3.3	0.5	0.7
2009	Male	15.8	5.6	0.3	15.9	2.7	11.5
	Female	4.6	1.8	0.1	4.1	0.2	0.9
2010	Male	18	6	0.5	23.1	2.1	14.4
	Female	4.3	1.8	0.1	4.8	0.4	0.9
2011	Male	16.1	4.8	0.5	24.2	2.5	13.8
	Female	4.1	1.0	0.1	5.4	0.3	1.1
2012	Male	12.2	3.3	0.4	28.0	2.0	15.5
	Female	3.8	0.6	0.0	5.7	0.2	0.9
2013	Male	12.9	4.6	0.4	29.8	2.0	19.5
	Female	2.7	0.8	0.1	7.1	0.3	1.6
2014	Male	11.3	4.5	0.8	32.7	1.9	17.6
	Female	3.5	1.0	0.0	7.2	0.4	1.5
2015	Male	13.1	5.0	0.5	35.8	1.9	21.3
	Female	3.6	0.9	0.2	6.9	0.2	1.9
MPD1		−4.5	20.1	5.8	12.8	−6.1	9.0
MPD2		−4.6	27.4	-*	8.4	4.6	8.0

mean percentage difference in males

mean percentage difference in females

In 2012 and 2014, no females were treated for cocaine addiction because we were not able to evaluate MPD

Table 2:

Treated drug users according to their age groups and gender per 100000 inhabitants, 2006–2015

Year	Gender	Age groups (yr)
		0–14	15–19	20–24	25–29	30–34	35–39	40–44	45–49	50–54	≥ 55
2006	Male	6.0	141.7	197.6	173.8	85.9	45.8	11.0	8.1	3.6	1.2
	Female	2.3	45.1	55.1	37.4	18.1	16.1	8.9	5.6	3.9	1.3
2007	Male	4.5	135.3	208.4	183.3	104.0	45.8	16.9	6.7	5.6	1.5
	Female	1.0	36.2	52.1	39	22.9	13.1	10.1	6.2	3.4	1.5
2008	Male	3.9	137.2	221	202.9	117.9	42.0	18.2	8.9	5.1	1.1
	Female	-	35	43.4	42.5	23.8	11.1	8.1	4.7	3.4	1.9
2009	Male	3.0	125.7	202.9	170.2	115.7	44.4	21.3	7.4	4.1	0.9
	Female	0.2	31.1	48.1	42.6	27.8	8.1	8.8	5.8	5.4	1.7
2010	Male	3.1	136.2	250	208	147.8	68.7	25.2	10.0	5.7	1.2
	Female	1.5	40.4	39.9	43.1	35.4	11.6	8.4	3.1	5.0	2.2
2011	Male	2.8	135	232.8	234.2	158.4	79.3	27.6	9.6	7.4	3.6
	Female	0.5	40.3	43.8	48.8	26	18.5	9.0	8.0	7.2	2.0
2012	Male	2.8	143.2	230.8	225.6	145.4	74.8	26.0	10.3	9.1	2.3
	Female	1.5	39.2	47.8	39.3	23.9	14.8	9.4	3.8	4.7	1.8
2013	Male	2.8	148	249.6	260.5	175.2	95.0	43.8	17.6	12	2.3
	Female	1.5	54.3	44.1	37.5	28.4	16.8	12.3	3.9	3.7	2.6
2014	Male	3.5	116.2	239.6	248.7	193.1	113.5	44.9	15.1	8.7	3.0
	Female	2.5	44.9	43.8	52.9	30.7	20.7	16.0	7.9	2.7	2.7
2015	Male	2.3	158.5	273.1	268.5	206.8	132.7	60.7	19.1	12.0	2.6
	Female	1.0	42.6	46.1	52.0	33.3	22.9	12.9	6.8	6.5	2.1
MPD1		−8.6	2.3	4.1	5.6	10.8	13.9	23.0	13.4	17.9	21.6
MPD2		-*	1.0	−1.4	4.8	8.4	7.7	5.7	17.8	15.6	7.5

mean percentage difference in males

mean percentage difference in females

was not possible to evaluate due to a lack of data for women in the year 2008