The Clinical journal of pain
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The aims of this study were 2-fold: (1) to investigate the consequences of opioid use in individuals with chronic pain in the Danish population, and (2) to investigate the development of and recovery from chronic pain from 2000 to 2005. ⋯ The annual incidence for the development of and the recovery from chronic pain was 2.7% and 9.4%, respectively. Increasing age up to 64 years, short education, poor self-rated health, high body mass index, and physical strain at work were predictors of chronic pain. The odds of recovery from chronic pain were almost 4 times higher among individuals not using opioids compared with individuals using opioids. In addition, use of strong opioids was associated with poor health-related quality of life. Furthermore, the results indicated that individuals with chronic pain using strong opioids pain had a higher risk of death than individuals without chronic pain (HR: 1.67; 95% CI: 1.03-2.70). However, this study cannot exclude disease severity as the primary cause of increased mortality.