Emergency-room visits from abuse of prescription and over-the-counter medicines doubled in the U.S. in four years, matching for the first time the number of overdoses of illegal drugs such as cocaine and heroin.

By Tom Randall at Bloomberg.com

Regulator-approved treatments were implicated in a record 1 million patients who sought help at hospital emergency departments in 2008, twice the number as in 2004, according to a study released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta. Overdoses from illicit drugs were unchanged, at 1 million emergency visits.

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