Fentanyl News and Research

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Fentanyl is a powerful synthetic opiate analgesic similar to but more potent than morphine. It is typically used to treat patients with severe pain, or to manage pain after surgery. It is also sometimes used to treat people with chronic pain who are physically tolerant to opiates. It is a schedule II prescription drug.

A judicial body blow to the ACA

Opponents of the Affordable Care Act may have stopped trying to overturn the entire law in court, but they have not stopped challenging pieces of it — and they have found an ally in Fort Worth, Texas: U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor.

30 Mar 2023

States try to obscure execution details as drugmakers hinder lethal injection

In 2011, Jeffrey Motts was executed in South Carolina. More than a decade later, the state hasn't carried out another execution because officials have struggled to obtain the drugs needed for lethal injection.

30 Mar 2023

Experimental anti-obesity drug may control appetite without surgery or nausea

Imagine getting the benefits of gastric bypass surgery without going under the knife -; a new class of compounds could do just that. In lab animals, these potential treatments reduce weight dramatically and lower blood glucose.

29 Mar 2023

Study reveals dramatic rise in drug overdose fatalities among older adults in the past two decades

Overdose mortality among people age 65 and older quadrupled over 20 years, suggesting the need for greater mental health and substance use disorder policies addressed at curbing the trend, a new research paper finds.

29 Mar 2023

CBD-based compounds boost the effects of naloxone

There's been a recent push in the U.S. to make naloxone -; a fast-acting opioid antidote -; available without a prescription.

28 Mar 2023

Study finds shared genetic risk variants across different substance use disorders

By combing through genomic data of over 1 million people, scientists have identified genes commonly inherited across addiction disorders, regardless of the substance being used.

22 Mar 2023

New CDC opioid guidelines: Too little, too late for chronic pain patients?

Jessica Layman estimates she has called more than 150 doctors in the past few years in her search for someone to prescribe opioids for her chronic pain.

15 Mar 2023

California offers bipartisan road map for protecting kids online even as big tech fights back

In California, a Democrat and a Republican figured out how to pass the country's toughest online privacy law protecting kids. If their experience is any indication, though, federal legislators can expect fierce pushback from Big Tech if they heed President Joe Biden's call for similar action on a national scale.

8 Mar 2023

Despite pharma claims, illicit drug shipments to us aren’t full of opioids. It’s generic Viagra.

For years, the FDA has defended its efforts to intercept prescription drugs coming from abroad by mail as necessary to keep out dangerous opioids, including fentanyl.

6 Mar 2023

Study finds fiftyfold increase in U.S. methamphetamine mortality rate between 1999 and 2021

The U.S. methamphetamine mortality rate increased fiftyfold between 1999 and 2021, with most of the added deaths also involving heroin or fentanyl, researchers report in the American Journal of Public Health.

20 Feb 2023

A call to action proposed for health providers to ensure widest distribution, easy availability of naloxone

In 2021, 100,306 Americans died from drug overdoses – a 28.5 percent increase from the prior year – with 75,673 attributed to opioids.

16 Feb 2023

As opioids mixed with animal tranquilizers arrive in Kensington, so do alarming health challenges

Many people living on the streets in Philadelphia's Kensington neighborhood — the largest open-air drug market on the East Coast — are in full-blown addiction, openly snorting, smoking, or injecting illicit drugs, hunched over crates or on stoops. Syringes litter sidewalks, and the stench of urine fouls the air.

15 Feb 2023

‘The country is watching’: California homeless crisis looms as Gov. Newsom eyes political future

Driving through the industrial outskirts of Sacramento, a stretch of warehouses, wholesale suppliers, truck centers, and auto repair shops northeast of downtown, it's hard to square California's $18 billion investment in homeless services with the roadside misery.

9 Feb 2023

Some addiction treatment centers turn big profits by scaling back care

Near the end of his scheduled three-month stay at a rehab center outside Austin, Texas, Daniel McKegney was forced to tell his father in North Carolina that he needed more time and more money, he recently recalled.

31 Jan 2023

Buprenorphine-involved overdose deaths did not increase after implementation of prescribing flexibilities

The proportion of opioid overdose deaths involving buprenorphine, a medication used to treat opioid use disorder, did not increase in the months after prescribing flexibilities were put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study.

20 Jan 2023

Research provides a comprehensive structural framework to design safer pain-relieving drugs

In the continuing effort to improve upon opioid pain relievers, American and Chinese scientists used cryoEM technology to solve the detailed structures of the entire family of opioid receptors bound to their naturally occurring peptides.

18 Jan 2023

Low-cost intervention can make a difference to America's deadly overdose epidemic

There are no simple solutions to America's deadly overdose epidemic, which costs 100,000 lives each year and is erasing gains in life expectancy.

6 Jan 2023

NY docs are now required to prescribe naloxone to some patients on opioid painkillers

Without opioid painkillers to dull the ache in his knees and other joints, Arnold Wilson wouldn't be able to walk half a block. The 63-year-old former New York City nurse has crippling arthritis for which he takes OxyContin twice a day and oxycodone when he needs additional relief.

5 Jan 2023

The official who investigates suspicious deaths in your town may be a doctor — or not

When a group of physicians gathered in Washington state for an annual meeting, one made a startling revelation: If you ever want to know when, how — and where — to kill someone, I can tell you, and you’ll get away with it. No problem.

20 Dec 2022

NIH establishes research network to test harm reduction strategies in community settings

To address the overdose crisis in the United States, the National Institutes of Health has established a research network that will test harm reduction strategies in different community settings to inform efforts to help save lives.

16 Dec 2022