WENATCHEE — A new drug was approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat opioid overdose in May 2023 which may be a new tool to address the opioid epidemic.
Jerome Adams a former United States Surgeon General, spoke to reporters at The Sierra Vista (Ariz.) Herald/Review, a sister publication of The Wenatchee World, earlier this year about Opvee (active ingredient nalmefene) and its applications to treating overdoses caused by fentanyl.
“The opioid epidemic originally came on the scene, really, as a prescription opioid epidemic,” Adams said. “Doctors were over-prescribing pills and we clamped down, in terms of prescribing, in terms of tamper resistant forms … and then people shifted to heroin.”
In 2018, Adams released a Surgeon General’s Advisory requesting that people carry more naloxone. He also said that people were dying every to 11 minutes of an opioid overdose.
“What we’ve seen now is that we shifted from this being a primarily heroin-based epidemic, to it being a fentanyl-based epidemic, and fentanyl is 50 to 100 times more potent than heroin,” Adams said.
In Chelan County, 21 people died due to drug overdoses in 2023, according to Wayne Harris, Chelan County Coroner.
Out of the 21, 15 were confirmed to have been due to fentanyl or fentanyl combined with other illicit drugs, Harris said. But, another four overdose deaths are suspected fentanyl-related and are awaiting toxicological reports, bringing the total closer to 19, Harris said in an email.
In 2022, less than 10 people died due to a drug overdose in Douglas County, according to state Department of Health data. Values less than 10, except zero, are suppressed to protect the affected people’s privacy.
Adams reiterated the importance of taking action with opioid overdose antidotes like Opvee to bring these figures down.
The former surgeon general pointed to one limitation in the use of naloxone being that it has a plasma half-life of two hours when administered intranasally as opposed to fentanyl which has a plasma half-life of four hours. Meaning, that naloxone needs to be administered repeatedly during overdoses, Adams said.
Opvee, which is administered nasally, has a plasma half-life of 11 hours, so repeated administration likely will not be necessary.
“It’s not something that is a competitor with, or is meant to replace naloxone,” Adams said. “It’s a tool in the toolkit. And we want people to understand that as your enemy evolves, you have to evolve too. And so again, almost all drug overdose deaths now involve fentanyl. And if we want to turn it around this time, we need to respond in kind with an agent that has been developed to reverse fentanyl.”
Adams said he is most focused on seeing this drug in the hands of firefighters, police and emergency medical personnel, hopefully allowing them to be more effective.
