# 176

Fentanyl Vaccine Potential ‘Game Changer’ for Opioid Epidemic 

University of Houston researchers announce a vaccine (subject to successful human testing) that blocks snorted/injected/swallowed pills/Fentanyl from reaching the brain (where, otherwise, the substance would depress respiration/heart rate all the way to death).  The only issue with the article is that the researchers/article describes Fentanyl use as producing a “high.” The natural and synthetic opioids are Central Nervous System Depressants, producing a “low” that can descend to nodding, sleep, coma and death.

    “Our vaccine is able to generate anti-fentanyl antibodies that bind to the consumed       fentanyl and prevent it from entering the brain, allowing it to be eliminated out of the body via the kidneys.”

The use of the term “consumed fentanyl” should mean entry by whatever source of entry. That would mean, pills, capsules, injection, trans-dermal absorption and snorting.

We await the trials and findings while pointing out the the olfactory receptors are linked to the brain and substances that are snorted through the nasal passages by-pass the normal metabolism that would have substances pass through the liver and excreted through the kidneys - as the article suggests.

Two other means of bypassing normal metabolism, used for hundreds of years, has been rectal administration and vaporizing a substance in order that entry to the blood stream at the lungs which results in a rapid delivery to the brain.

https://uh.edu/news-events/stories/2022-news-articles/november-2022/11142022-fentanyl-vaccine-haile-kosten.php