Addiction professionals and first responders cope with a lot of variables when responding to an overdose, but nothing has changed the outcomes of emergency calls like Naloxone (also known as Narcan), an opioid antagonist drug that has the power to reverse overdoses. There are several versions of Naloxone delivery available. However, research has revealed that the single-step nasal inhaler seems to be most effective at reversing overdoses, according to new research led by faculty at Binghamton University, State University at New York.
In the past few years, expanded access to naloxone has saved thousands of lives by reversing fatal overdoses in people with opioid use disorder. While many people who overdose are not ready for help yet, others identify the moment their overdose occurred as a pivotal point in their life that helped them choose to get into recovery. Law enforcement and other first responders carry the drug on them all the time, especially in places like Ohio where overdoses take place in parking lots and other public spaces.
There is more than one way to administer Naloxone. Injections can be difficult for the untrained person to deliver, but there is often help available for people who choose to carry the drug. Sometimes injections are required multiple times for serious overdoses, and the skill of the person injecting the drug may come into play when it comes to reversing the drug.
William Eggleston, the clinical assistant professor at the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at Binghamton University, wanted to know if everyday people can successfully administer naloxone after basic video training. His research found that for ordinary people who aren’t first responders, the single-step nasal spray was used most successfully with minimal problems.
Eggleston conducted a study to estimate and compare the rate of successful administration and the time to successful administration by community members for single-step nasal spray, multi-step atomized nasal spray, and intramuscular simulated naloxone.
For the study, and over the course of several days, 138 adults with no prior naloxone training were asked to watch a two-minute video teaching them how to administer the drug. For each type of administration, they were asked to the adminster the reversal drug on a dummy.
After the video training, participants were able to administer the single-step nasal spray naloxone with a higher rate of success than the other types. This information is important for community naloxone programs across the United States.
“With training, nasal sprays, in general, had a higher degree of success than the shot,” Eggleston said. “Even if it seemed to us it was a no-brainer that we should be using nasal sprays, we had no data before, so now we have some to support that.”
Many people don’t realize it, but Naloxone has also been used to help people who have overdosed on other drugs such as synthetic marijuana and benzodiazepines.
The cost of the single-step Narcan spray is about $140, making it more cost prohibitive than the injection, which is about $40.
Image courtesy and copyright Adapt Pharma.