Opioid use disorder: is history repeating itself with sufentanil?

In their 2021 review of treating opioid use disorder in primary care, Buresh and colleagues did not discuss prevention.1Innovative chemists have long manipulated the naturally occurring morphia to produce synthetic opioids. The first was Alder Wright, who in 1874 synthesised what was later called heroin.2 In Germany 23 years later, heroin was independently synthesised by Felix Hoffman. In 1959 chemists in Belgium synthesised another opioid from morphia called fentanyl.Heroin and fentanyl are potent analgesics, but both are addictive, and this precluded widespread medical use. But they have euphoric qualities, which led to their industrial production and distribution well outside medical supervision, and this, in turn, led to widespread deaths worldwide.One hundred years after heroin was first synthesised, another synthetic opioid was made, again in Belgium. The drug, sufentanil, “lay on the shelf” for about 40 years. Recently it has been promoted to effectively relieve pain3 and is available as a…
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