Improving Naloxone-Delivery to treat Opioid Overdoses

This article was about improving the formula and delivery of an antidote for opioid overdoses. The antidote used is known by the trade name Narcan, but it is called naloxone by chemists.This is a pressing issue because overdose deaths from heroin and prescription opioids have skyrocketed over the past decade in the United States. Naloxone is a competitive receptor antagonist and competes for the same receptors as opioid agonists. It pushes those drugs out and substitutes in their place. Naloxone does not activate opioid receptors upon binding, so it produces no opioid high. All it does is prevent those other opioids from acting and it can reverse overdoses in a matter of minutes.

I know from personal experience that we are in a heroin epidemic. Where I'm from (Dover,DE) heroin has hit the city very hard and it's becoming the southern Wilmington. I cannot even go fishing without finding used syringes in the forest. Over the past 15 years, prescription opioid and heroin overdose deaths have quadrupled. Now, Narcan is known to bring overdose victims on the brink of death back to life, but improvements in how it is delivered can still be made.

One of the problems is that naloxone is only available by prescription in 38 states and naloxone is what prevents an overdose from becoming fatal. Many people who overdose are in the presence of another person and that person may hesitate to call for help; in fear of the victim or themselves being arrested. Time is a huge factor in determining life or death, and waiting for paramedics to administer the treatment is not good enough. That is why some medical professionals feel that naloxone should be available to people who take opioid medication and people who are addicts. They feel that naloxone should be in the medicine cabinet of all patients taking opioid pain medication or for families of addicts. However, the only FDA-approved way of administering naloxone is through intravenous or intramuscular injection , and that can be troublesome for people not trained in that manner.

Giving an overdose victim an injection is also dangerous because many opioid abusers could have bloodborne diseases such as Hepatitis C or HIV and expose people to it. To get over this problem successful intranasal naloxone delivery systems were developed,but they have a high rate of error with dosage amounts and people must be trained to use them. Therefore, development of nasal-delivered naloxone with the same effectiveness as injection-delivered naloxone was created. The FDA required injection-like pharmacokinetic properties for approval of any intranasal version of naloxone. The new nasal spray contains a solution of naloxone 40 times as concentrated as the original intranasal naloxone delivery system.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  The new product is easy to use and another product, an autoinjector, has been created to be easy to use by the addict or first responder (which could be anybody). For the autoinjector, "the company’s scientists went through 22 different naloxone formulations before finding one that had a long shelf life and could withstand high temperatures, Williamson says. They also studied how people interact with Evzio to ensure it was easy to use." In addition, "As the opioid crisis expands, elected officials are beginning to support efforts to get naloxone into the hands of first responders and bystanders. President Barack Obama’s 2017 budget includes $500 million to expand overdose prevention, including improving access to naloxone."