BONITA SPRINGS, FLA. – Systemic gaps inhibit the collection of data that could be helpful in combating skyrocketing fentanyl use in the United States, experts said at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry.
Jane C. Maxwell, PhD, research professor at the Addiction Research Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, pointed to the Treatment Episode Data Set as an example. It includes client-level information on substance-use treatment admissions from state agencies, and it could be a good source of fentanyl data. The problem? The admissions data do not have a category for fentanyl.
“So we don’t even know who the users are in that data set,” Dr. Maxwell said.
When it comes to mortality, the data on fentanyl are sometimes available, but they are cumbersome to collect, she said. “The only way to get at fentanyl in the mortality data – because you’re going to get it under ‘synthetic opiates’ – is to get the literal texts that are written on the death certificates.” That requires hand-counting the cases of fentanyl in order to know whether a death was attributable to fentanyl or some other drug.
The data that are available paint a grim picture, with drug-poisoning deaths from “other synthetics,” the category that includes fentanyl, soaring since 2013, surging past deaths from heroin as the top killer, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.
The number of drug cases involving fentanyl jumped to 60,670 in 2017, up from 11,992 in 2015, according to a report from the National Forensic Laboratory Information System.
Dr. Maxwell said when she first heard the word “enigma” used to describe the fentanyl phenomenon, she thought it was a curious word choice. But as she stepped back and looked at how deadly fentanyl is, and the gaps in what is really known about it, she reconsidered. she said.
In addition, Sandra D. Comer, PhD, noted that in 2006 a spike in fentanyl cases was described as an “epidemic,” before falling again. By 2015, the number of cases involving fentanyl was 8 times that “epidemic” amount, driven not by pharmaceutical product but by synthetic versions of the drug.
“There are hundreds of labs now that are making fentanyl,” said Dr. Comer, professor of neurobiology in the department of psychiatry at Columbia University in New York. “This is why the [Drug Enforcement Administration] has stated that they think it’s a problem that’s not going to go away any time soon.”
Dr. Maxwell reported no relevant disclosures. Dr. Comer reported consulting and collaboration with several companies, including Alkermes, Janssen, Mallinckrodt, and Sun Pharmaceutical.