Fentanyl-related deaths 'rising in humans'
Often, drug users don't know what they're buying and there is no way for them to know if it contains fentanyl.
Fentanyl-related deaths are reported to be soaring in parts of the US, as illegal drug makers have begun experimenting with the opioid, baking it into drugs such as heroin.
Yet for many humans and animals, the analgesic is important for the treatment of severe chronic pain.
According to Science News, the magazine of the Society for Science and the Public, fentanyl is not only being found in recreational drugs such as heroin, but also in counterfeit pain medication.
High doses are said to have been detected in fake versions of Norco in San Francisco in March this year, and in illegal pills sold as oxycodone in New Jersey in January. Late last year, the opioid was also found in fake Xanax in California.
While there are no concrete figures, the death toll from this drug is thought to be rising dramatically in parts of the US.
Writing in Science News, neuroscience writer Laura Sanders reports that between 2007 and 2012, there were around 30 Fentanyl-related deaths per year in Maryland. In 2015, the figure soared to 340. Similarly, in Connecticut, there were 14 such deaths in 2012, rising to 188 deaths in 2015.
Fentanyl is 30 to 40 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. Illicit fentanyl can prove fatal within minutes by paralysing the muscles. When injected quickly, the drug is known to paralyse the chest wall muscles, preventing breathing. But it was not known if this effect, known as 'wooden chest' was responsible for the death toll in illegal users.
Along with a team of colleagues, Henry Spiller from the Central Ohio Poison Center in Columbus, examined 48 fentanyl-related deaths. Generally, the body starts to break fentanyl down into norfentanyl within two minutes, but in 20 of these cases, there was no sign of norfentanyl, suggesting the patients died almost immediately after receiving fentanyl.
Often, drug users don't know what they're buying and there is no way for them to know if it contains fentanyl. Lewis Nelson, a medical toxicologist at the New York University Langone Medical Center, told Science News: "It's a dosing problem. Because the drug is so potent, little changes in measurements can have very big implications for toxicity. That's really the problem."
While there is no simple solution to the problem, Spiller says users need a more targeted public health message, stressing the risks of fentanyl. Daniel Ciccarone from the University of California, told Science News that deaths might be reduced if there were facilities for drug users to take illegal drugs under the care of medical professionals.
The BSAVA has opened submissions for the BSAVA Clinical Research Abstracts 2026.
