The synthetic opioid fentanyl is well known for the many lives it has claimed – mainly in the US, but elsewhere too. Now, a less well-known class of synthetic opioids called nitazenes is starting to crop up in overdose cases, on both sides of the Atlantic.
Nitazenes have recently been the subject of a national patient safety alert in the UK as a result of a spike in opioid-related deaths over the last two months, with several cases involving nitazenes.
Some drugs in the nitazene class are 100 times more potent than morphine – so about as potent as fentanyl. However, nitazenes may be more deadly.
