It led to Prince’s demise, however what is the prescription medicine fentanyl?

Prince’s cause of loss of life used to be an accidental painkiller overdose.

The Midwest Scientific Examiner’s Workplace released a report saying the singer died after taking a toxic quantity of fentanyl.

It’s a painkiller that The United States’s Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) says is 50 occasions stronger than heroin.

It’s frequently used in hospitals to treat cancer sufferers with serious ache, however the DEA says that it’s also getting used at the side road to chop heroin.

Image caption This implant for a drug called buprenorphine is now being used to treat opioid dependancy

what’s fentanyl?

Fentanyl is an opioid that was once first created via Paul Janssen, a Belgian who founded the pharmaceutical company, Janssen Pharmaceutica, in 1960.

It used to be introduced as an intravenous anaesthetic beneath the brand identify Sublimaze.

In the mid-nineteen nineties it become to be had as a patch.

Even then, it used to be in most cases handiest given to patients with severe power ache, or those who’d built up a tolerance to weaker opioids.

Opioids are an addictive type of drug that concentrate on sure receptors within the brain. Heroin is an opioid, as are a number of different prescribed drugs like morphine and codeine.

Image caption Michael Jackson also died of a prescription drug overdose, although he took demerol in preference to fentanyl

Why is it so dangerous?

Because it’s so much more robust than other medication, fentanyl will also be harmful while it’s not taken under the supervision of a doctor.

The US Centre for Illness Keep Watch Over and Prevention (CDC) says there’s been a TWO HUNDRED% building up in deaths associated with opioids considering the fact that 2000.

Between 2013 and 2014, the collection of deaths after an overdose of a man-made opioid, like fentanyl, almost doubled.

Image caption In America, a baby is born dependent on opioids every 19 minutes

Opioids can kill as a result of they slow down the respiration system. Taking too many, or mixing them with alcohol or drowsing pills, could make you lose consciousness or forestall breathing.

Part of the problem is that it’s made its manner onto the streets in The United States.

Drug manufacturers are including it to heroin and selling it to leisure customers who think it’s a different drug.

In March remaining 12 months, the DEA launched an announcement caution that fentanyl used to be a risk to public safety.

Where did the issue get started?

In 1997, a document by way of the yankee Society of Anaesthesiologists and the yank Pain Society encouraged medical doctors to prescribe more opioids to sufferers in ache.

Image caption Prince fanatics at a memorial amassing in LA

On The Other Hand, extended opioid use can make a patient build up a tolerance to it.

When that occurs, a higher drug like fentanyl could be used.

In 2014, it was prescribed more than six million occasions in the US.

It doesn’t lend a hand that The Us’s personal healthcare system permits sufferers to visit a host of different doctors to get opioids, as lengthy as they can come up with the money for it.

Image caption Actor Philip Seymour Hoffman died after taking heroin, cocaine, benzodiazepines and amphetamine in 2014

If they are able to’t get the medicine legally, they might buy them from side road sellers with out knowing if they contain a deadly dose of fentanyl or not.

What Is being done?

The CDC has launched new tips advising docs to be careful when they prescribe opioids to someone who isn’t a most cancers affected person.

New regulations have been handed that mean docs must take a look at a database sooner than prescribing opioids, to check what number of occasions the affected person has prior to now been prescribed them.

President Obama also introduced in February that he sought after extra investment put into habit treatment programmes.