Nearly half of opioid-related overdose deaths in the U.S. were caused by the highly potent synthetic drug fentanyl, surpassing heroin and prescription pills as the most lethal drug killing Americans, according to a new report by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Among the 42,249 deaths opioid-related overdose deaths in 2016, 19,413, or 45.9 percent, involved illicit fentanyl, according to a research letter published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Researchers analyzed data from the National Vital Statistics System which tracks mortality in the U.S. They looked at deaths from 2010 to 2016.
At least 40.4 percent of overdose deaths in 2016 were related to prescription opioids and 36.6 percent involved heroin, although some of these deaths involved multiple drugs.
“These findings underscore the rapidly increasing involvement of synthetic opioids in the drug overdose epidemic and in recent increases in overdose deaths involving illicit and psychotherapeutic drugs,” the authors wrote.
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