According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, every day in the United States, 128 people die after overdosing on opioids.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that the total economic burden of prescription opioid overdose, abuse, and dependence in the U.S.
was $78.5 billion in 2013. The figure includes costs investigators associate with healthcare, criminal justice, and lost productivity.While efforts to develop a nonaddictive synthetic opioid are making progress, an international team of scientists, which the Luxembourg Institute of Health (LIH) leads, is working on a radically different approach.They have discovered a potential way to increase levels of the body’s own opioids.