News Xylazine, a dangerous animal sedative, is contaminating Philly’s drug supply

[thegreenhand]

Xylazine, a dangerous animal sedative, is contaminating Philly’s drug supply​

Aubrey Whelan
The Philadelphia Inquirer
9 Mar 2022

An animal tranquilizer with a strong sedative effect is increasingly turning up in Philadelphia’s fentanyl supply and in the toxicology reports of overdose victims, a new study has found.

The study’s authors say more research is needed on the prevalence of the tranquilizer xylazine in Philadelphia and around the country, and what it is doing to people who inject drugs. Anecdotally, drug users and health-care workers have reported serious skin lesions appearing on people who have injected xylazine. Plus, it appears it may be harder to reverse overdoses when an opioid like fentanyl contains xylazine, the study authors wrote.

“Tranquilizers have many similar effects on the body as opioids‚” said Chelsea Shover, a study author and an assistant professor-in-residence at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine. “But they’re not responsive to naloxone, which will reverse an opioid overdose. Now, in addition to countering the effects of opioid overdose, you have the effects of the sedation from the tranquilizer.”

Read the full article here.

 

[thegreenhand]

link to the referenced research article:

Xylazine spreads across the US: A growing component of the increasingly synthetic and polysubstance overdose crisis