Team:Concordia-Montreal/Background
In Canada alone, over 12 800 people died of opioid-related overdose between 2016 and March 2019. In the first quarter of 2019 alone, 93% of deadly overdoses were accidental, and among those, 82% were due to fentanyl or fentanyl analogues. Since 2016, the proportion of overdoses involving fentanyl and its analogues have increased by 35% (Health Canada). Fentanyl is a synthetic lipophilic opioid analogue with strong anesthetic and analgesic properties (Fentanyl, Pubchem.ncbi) used in modern medicine for the treatment of severe pain (opioids.cdc). It is a strictly regulated substance prescribed for transdermal use as patches or orally as lozenges. Its potency is estimated to be about 100 times that of morphine, and analogues such as carfentanil are among the strongest known opioids with a potency 10 000 times that of morphine (carfentanil, pubchem.ncbi).
In the United States, the numbers are even more staggering: in 2017, drug overdoses accounted for 70 237 deaths - a number well above that of car accident deaths (National Safety Council) - and over two thirds involved opioids (Scholl et al., 2019). Among those numbers, fentanyl was involved in 60% of opioid-related overdoses, which represents a 45% increase from the previous year (Scholl et al., 2019). This sharp increase is mainly driven by illicitly synthesized fentanyl (O’Donnell et al., 2016).
The possibility of synthesizing fentanyl as a fine powder makes it incredible easy to lace into other drugs such as cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, but also to use it to produce counterfeit pills such as anti-anxiety and pain medications (Overdose Deaths, NYTimes. Because fentanyl is entirely synthetic and does not depend on the processing of opium poppies, it is easier for illicit drug labs to obtain, and increases their profits. Due to its potency, overdoses generally arise by inadvertently consuming too much fentanyl by mistaking it for another drug. As the presence of fentanyl and its analogues becomes more prominent in recreational drugs and illicit prescription drugs, the chances of accidentally consuming them also increases.
Currently, while fentanyl test strips are available commercially, users are warned of limitations which can void the results such as: uneven mixing of fentanyl into other drugs, presence of other substances which can interfere with testing, and low concentrations (healthycanadians.gc, 2018) .
Although we do acknowledge that both Canada and the United States of America have an ongoing opioid crisis, our project does not aim at solving this epidemic. The Concordia-Montreal iGEM team has the goal of reducing the number of accidental overdoses involving fentanyl. We believe that to solve a crisis of this amplitude would require much more than the implementation or usage of our device.