Ciatti, Joanna L and Vázquez-Guardado, Abraham and Brings, Victoria E and Park, Jihun and Ruyle, Brian and Ober, Rebecca A and McLuckie, Alicia J and Talcott, Michael R and Carter, Emily A and Burrell, Amy R and Sponenburg, Rebecca A and Trueb, Jacob and Gupta, Prashant and Kim, Joohee and Avila, Raudel and Seong, Minho and Slivicki, Richard A and Kaplan, Melanie A and Villalpando-Hernandez, Bryan and Massaly, Nicolas and Montana, Michael C and Pet, Mitchell and Huang, Yonggang and Morón, Jose A and Gereau, Robert W and Rogers, John A (2024) An autonomous implantable device for the prevention of death from opioid overdose. Science Advances, 10, (43), eadr3567. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adr3567.
External website: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adr3567
Opioid overdose accounts for nearly 75,000 deaths per year in the United States, now a leading cause of mortality among young people aged 18 to 45 years. At overdose levels, opioid-induced respiratory depression becomes fatal without the administration of naloxone within minutes. Currently, overdose survival relies on bystander intervention, requiring a nearby person to find the overdosed individual and have immediate access to naloxone to administer. To circumvent the bystander requirement, we developed the Naloximeter: a class of life-saving implantable devices that autonomously detect and treat overdose while simultaneously contacting first responders. We present three Naloximeter platforms, for fundamental research and clinical translation, all equipped with optical sensors, drug delivery mechanisms, and a supporting ecosystem of technology to counteract opioid-induced respiratory depression. In small and large animal studies, the Naloximeter rescues from otherwise fatal opioid overdose within minutes. This work introduces life-changing, clinically translatable technologies that can broadly benefit a susceptible population recovering from opioid use disorder.
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