A new study finds the rise in drug overdose deaths in the United States has contributed to an increase in organ transplants, CNN reports.
Overdose death donors accounted for 1.1 percent of donors in 2000 and 13.4 percent in 2017, representing a 24-fold rise, the researchers report in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
The study also found many organs from overdose-death donors were not used to save lives when they could have been.
“The current epidemic of deaths from overdose is a tragedy. It would also be tragic to continue to underutilize life-saving transplants from donors,” said lead researcher Dr. Christine Durand of Johns Hopkins University. “We have an obligation to optimize the use of all organs donated. The donors, families and patients waiting deserve our best effort to use every gift of life we can.”
APRIL 19, 2018 BY PARTNERSHIP NEWS SERVICE STAFF
The FDA recently voted in favor of pushing a new formulation of oxycodone hydrochloride for approval. The new OxyContin formula is more difficult to crush or dissolve which will hopefully make it harder to be used as a drug of abuse . The FDA recommended that Purdue Pharma's application for a new, resin-coated formulation should replace the original version, which has been on the market since 1996. Randall Flick, MD, an anesthesiologist at the Mayo Clinic who voted to recommend approval of the drug said, "Clearly the old formulation is worse than the new, although I think the difference is relatively small," Flick concluded, "Hardcore abusers are likely to devise new ways to break down the harder tablet or figure out which solvents will dissolve it fastest, within 'day or weeks' of the product's release on the market."