Escalating prices of the drug naloxone may threaten efforts to reduce opioid-related deaths across America, a team from Yale University and the Mayo Clinic warns.
Naloxone is a drug given to people who overdose on prescription opioids and heroin. If administered in time, it can reverse the toxic and potentially deadly effects of "opioid intoxication."
The research team called attention to skyrocketing prices for the lifesaving antidote, noting:
Hospira (a Pfizer Inc. company) charges $142 for a 10-pack of naloxone -- up 129 percent since 2012.
Amphastar's 1 milligram version of naloxone is used off-label as a nasal spray. It's priced around $40 -- a 95 percent increase since September 2014.
Newer, easier-to-use formulations are even more expensive -- a two-dose package of Evzio (naloxone) costs $4,500, an increase of more than 500 percent over two years.
Naloxone is part of a wave of precipitous price hikes affecting old and new medicines. These drugs include Mylan's EpiPen injectors for life-threatening allergic reactions; Turing Pharmaceuticals' Sovaldi for hepatitis C; and insulin for diabetes made by Eli Lilly and Company, Novo Nordisk and Sanofi U.S.
"The challenge is as the price goes up for naloxone, it becomes less accessible for patients," said Ravi Gupta, the study's lead author.
Hospital emergency departments remain the largest users of naloxone. But, in recent years, local health departments, emergency medical services and community-based organizations have been acquiring the drug to use at the scene of overdoses or to hand out to people at risk, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
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4 comments:
While you folks continue to blindly beat your drum and happily march in your partisan ideologue parade, we are all getting hosed. Just like the epipen, do you really believe it's just a coincidence that officials are pushing for this antidote to be stocked in PD's across the nation? Follow the money trail.
I hope they raise the price to 1 million a pill or shot , you want to be a druggie , so be it , bye , bye .
Anonymous Anonymous said...
I hope they raise the price to 1 million a pill or shot , you want to be a druggie , so be it , bye , bye .
December 9, 2016 at 6:44 PM
oh come on, you cannot be that dense. there are more "LEGAL druggies" than the ones you are thinking of.
Of course it would rise in price as it becomes more & more widely used. It's been around a very long time and was DIRT CHEAP prior to being used outside a hospital.
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