The USFDA has recently cautioned HCPs about the risk of patients exposed to xylazine along with heroin, fentanyl, or other illicit drug overdoses. Xylazine, a pain reliever and sedative approved for use in animals, can cause severe necrotic skin ulcerations and life-threatening adverse effects similar to opioids in humans, making it difficult to differentiate xylazine exposure from opioid overdoses. In addition, routine toxicology tests cannot detect xylazine. Therefore, more analytical techniques are needed to identify xylazine in illicit drug overdose cases.
Xylazine is not safe to use in humans , and it is unknown if naloxone can reverse the effects of xylazine. Generally, veterinary medicines, including tolazoline hydrochloride and yohimbine hydrochloride, are used as reversal agents for xylazine overdose in animals. However, FDA does not recommend those agents for humans because…
