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Fentanyl Vaccine Potential ‘Game Changer’ for Opioid Epidemic
Study Suggests New Vaccine Could Prevent Deadly Opioid from Entering the Brain
uh.edu
“Fentanyl Vaccine”
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Anti-fentanyl antibodies? Just imagine the chaos in the PACU for these patients. At least ten times more challenging than a suboxone patient.
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deleted87051
In the article, the developers claim that the vaccine would be specific to fentanyl and it’s close synthetic analogs so other opioids should still be effective. That implies that clinical workarounds would be pretty simple, eg dilaudid and morphine.
Consider me skeptical...
And, if the workaround is so easy, why wouldn't the addicted patient simply change their drug of choice in the same way. Then, what good is the vaccine?
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deleted87051
That’s a great point. I agree. But their hope is that the vaccine could prevent unintentional overdoses by people who unwittingly take fentanyl laced drugs.
Ahhh. I see. That is a dilemma. I hate to see an effective drug in our toolbox essentially taken away but I fear that this is what would happen if a "vaccine" such as this became prevalent. Fentanyl laced drugs seems to be the latest thing but I wonder if it will just pass like other things as the next more popular or cheaper thing comes along. As stated above, I would worry that it would completely wreck the endogenous opioid system and create a whole population of people who have pain issues related to the fact that they have no inner ability to amp up their own endogenous opioid system in response to painful stimuli. Doesn't that seem like it would really screw that up or am I being paranoid?
It would have to receive multiple years of trials before I would ever consider such a thing (I would assume I would never need it because I am not in an "at risk" population) or recommend it for patients.
How much of a problem is that really though? (Genuinely asking as I haven't looked up stats on that at all). In comparison to all drug OD's, alcohol OD's etc?
Last year I had a patient who was mad that there was “heroin”(fentanyl) in her birthday coke .. she was just doin’ a couple lines for her birthday 🤣
I don’t think she would have gotten the vaccine tho
There is an amazing drug in our arsenal against addiction and overdose but it is rarely used, vivitrol (aka depo naltrexone). This is an amazing drug for several reasons. First off, it renders opiates completely useless and the user doesn’t get high or overdose. Also it helps with some of the cravings for drugs, including alcohol. The downside is you must be clean for two weeks prior to the first injection and the injection apparently hurts like hell.
I thought this had some side effects like bad depression or suicidal ideation cause your endorphin system gets all messed up, but I could have just imagined that. Been a long time since I heard about depo naltrexone.
This is a stupid idea. These researchers are wasting their time. Plus fentanyl is small, lipid soluble, and rapidly distributed, I doubt this will be particularly effective.
