Published 21 July 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b2980
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b2980

News

Relaxing prescribing of naloxone could save lives of drug users, expert says

Daniel Henderson, BMJ

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

A leading pharmacologist has called for more widespread availability of a drug that could save the lives of users of opiates.

Leslie Iverson, professor of pharmacology at the University of Oxford, believes that naloxone should be made more freely available to families of drug addicts so that they can give an intramuscular injection after a respiratory arrest while waiting for paramedics or other professional treatment.

"Naloxone needs to be much more widely available to save the lives of the thousand people who die from a heroin overdose each year" said Professor Iverson, at a press conference in London this week.

Naloxone blocks the opioid receptors in the brain, reversing the potentially fatal breathing problems that can be induced by an overdose of opiates such as heroin, methadone, or pethidine. The reversal effects last about two hours, enabling the patient to be taken to hospital where further treatment can be given. . . . [Full text of this article]


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ