The opioid crisis or opioid epidemic in the United States is a long-standing public health emergency in the United States. Streets populated by zombies who injected or smoked fentanyl and, in many cases, died from an overdose. Scenes are becoming increasingly common in many cities across the United States, where this powerful drug is now the leading cause of death for people ages 18 to 49. What started as a simple painkiller has turned into a veritable epidemic and a valuable source of income for organized crime.
The opioid epidemic has nightmarish numbers in the US
The first wave of deaths caused by prescription opioids such as methadone, oxycodone, and hydrocodone dates back to the 1990s, while the second wave began around 2010 and showed a trend similar to the increase in heroin overdose deaths. The third wave began in 2013 and is primarily linked to the illicit market for prescription opioids such as tramadol and fentanyl. According to some estimates, one hundred thousand deaths a year is a massacre.
This summer, attention in parts of the US (particularly California) has been on fluorofentanyl, a new form of ‘masked’ fentanyl that is also thought to be 5 times more potent than the normal dose and has been blamed for a large number of overdose deaths. Like other ‘designer drugs’ (modified versions of existing psychoactive substances, often approved drugs, designed to evade laws and controls) it failed conventional testing. A team of researchers from the University of British Columbia and the British Columbia Provincial Toxicology Center sought to solve this problem and developed a more effective way to find out which new designer drugs are circulating in the population. In a study published inAnalytical chemistry‘ demonstrated that high-resolution mass spectrometry can be used to analyze large-scale urine samples and discover emerging substance molecules that previous conventional tests had missed. There are 25 to 30 different known analogues of fentanyl.
Fentanyl and its “disguised” versions
Experts say this approach can be helpful for public health and safety because it can save lives by enabling rapid identification of new substances and guide timely clinical responses to drug emergencies. Essentially, it’s like fentanyl and its ‘masked’ versions. With the new testing method, researchers were able to “detect a number of substances circulating in British Columbia that were undetectable with existing tests. When new drugs emerge locally, this is important information for doctors and public health officials to have.” ” features study leader and lead author Michael Skinnider, who conducted the research at the University of British Columbia and an assistant professor at Princeton University.
Experts state that designer drugs have proliferated on the illicit market in the last two decades. They tend to be modified versions of other molecules that have similar effects but have enough structural changes to bypass drug laws. Some can poison or even kill those who use them. The local Toxicology Center has detected more than 20 different substances of concern by monitoring them since 2020. Researchers used high-resolution mass spectrometry to reanalyze more than 12,000 urine samples collected in British Columbia from 2019 to 2022. Retrospective analysis revealed new synthetic substances. Opioids, benzodiazepines, and stimulants not identified during initial screening. One of these, fluorofentanyl, is a modified version of fentanyl; It was not present in samples before mid-2022 and then increased in the final months of the study. According to the authors’ logic, this suggests that it entered the local drug supply rather suddenly. Some of the other drugs also showed significant peaks during the two-year study period.
Typically, to confirm the presence of a drug in a sample, the laboratory must first know what it is looking for and obtain it in synthetic form. This becomes a ‘reference standard’ used to develop a reproducible laboratory test that leaves no doubt as to the presence of the substance. However, these reference standards can be difficult to obtain. Finding hundreds of items that may or may not be present in a community is expensive and impractical; so laboratories make educated guesses about which ones to buy.
The goal of the study was to find a better way to prioritize the acquisition of reference standards. And the researchers considered a new approach based on the use of high-resolution mass spectrometry. They explain that a urine sample should be imagined like a puzzle with all its pieces distributed as molecules. The mass spectrometer can precisely determine the weight and shape of each piece of the puzzle; This helps researchers figure out which ones match combinations specific to illicit drugs. If a laboratory anywhere in the world has published data about new drug molecules found in its samples, a laboratory in British Columbia can compare that data with its own data and determine what drugs are available locally. This is not a definitive confirmation, but it is sufficient to direct the laboratory to the correct reference standards for more in-depth testing.
The strategy might work
A retrospective analysis of the samples in the study showed that the strategy could work. “Applying this process on a regular basis will allow us to respond much more quickly to the emergence of new substances and significantly reduce the time between a drug being released to the public and our ability to rigorously test it,” senior Aaron Shapiro said. author of the study. The toxicology center is applying the new tool to clinical urine drug and drug screening and hopes to apply it to other datasets in the future.
Source: Today IT
Karen Clayton is a seasoned journalist and author at The Nation Update, with a focus on world news and current events. She has a background in international relations, which gives her a deep understanding of the political, economic and social factors that shape the global landscape. She writes about a wide range of topics, including conflicts, political upheavals, and economic trends, as well as humanitarian crisis and human rights issues.
