The National Anthrax Outbreak Control Team (NAOCT) claims the Scottish Government could “usefully give this aspect further consideration” as guidance on the issue would be helpful for Outbreak Control Teams (OCTs) and addiction services.
Report author Dr Colin Ramsay, chairman of NAOCT, said prescribing heroin was suggested as a control strategy during the year-long outbreak – which began in Glasgow in December 2009 – but NAOCT considered the suggestion to be outwith its remit.
Lightlake Therapeutics Inc. to discuss with King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry on the Development of a New Opiate Overdose Treatment
Lightlake Therapeutics Inc. (LLTP - OTCBB),(the “Company” or “Lightlake”), an early stage biopharmaceutical company developing modern addiction treatments based on its expertise using opioid antagonists, announced today that it is seeking to collaborate with Europe’s largest centre for research and post-graduate education in psychiatry, King’s College London Institute of Psychiatry, to develop a new treatment for opiate overdose.
Lightlake has agreed to liaise with Professor John Strang, Head of Addictions at King’s’ Institute of Psychiatry (IoP) and Director of the National Addiction Centre who has pioneered the approach of Take-Home Emergency Naloxone to prevent heroin overdose deaths. It is now established that there are times of particular risk, such as on release from prison in the UK, where prisoners with previous heroin addiction histories are over seven times more likely to suffer a drug-related death during the first two weeks after their release, and one in 200 released prisoners in the UK with a history of heroin use die from a drug-related death within four weeks of re-entering society. Lightlake hope to develop a new naloxone spray suitable for heroin overdose resuscitation, and which may be particularly suitable for administration by a parent or other family member.
