Use of opioid overdose antidote by laypersons rose 43% from 2020 to 2022, study finds [Video]

After years of continuously rising opioid overdoses, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that overdose deaths decreased 3% in 2023, the first annual decrease since 2018. A new study shows how the increased administration of naloxone by non-medical laypersons – or bystanders with little to no medical training – could be one factor contributing to this decline.Making naloxone, a drug used to reverse opioid overdose that’s commonly known as Narcan, more widely available has been part of concentrated efforts to increase layperson intervention.The new study, published Monday in the journal JAMA Network Open, says that from June 2020 to June 2022, emergency medical services reported 744,078 patients receiving naloxone across the US. The researchers found that EMS-documented naloxone administration rates fell by 6.1% in this period, but the percentage of people who got naloxone from a layperson before EMS arrival increased by 43.5%.”The fact that we saw …