Doctors in hospital emergency rooms are more willing to prescribe powerful narcotics to ease pain than they were a decade ago, but are still more likely to give the drugs to white patients than blacks, Hispanics, or Asians, the Associated Press reported Jan. 1.

Researchers analyzed more than 150,000 ER visits and found that narcotic pain medications were prescribed to 37 percent of patients complaining of pain in 2005, up from 23 percent in 1993. But while doctors gave narcotics to 31 percent of whites suffering from pain, they did so for only 28 percent of Asians, 24 percent of Hispanics, and 23 percent of blacks.

"The gaps between whites and nonwhites have not appeared to close at all," said study co-author Mark Pletcher of the University of California at San Francisco.

Rising use of narcotics appears to reflect growing understanding of pain management among ER physicians. Experts speculated that doctors may be less willing to give narcotics to minorities because they believe blacks and others may be more likely to abuse the drugs (in fact, whites are more likely to abuse prescription drugs). Minority patients also may be less likely to complain about pain, researchers suggested.

The findings appear in the Jan. 2, 2008 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.