CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW)- UVA Health’s Blue Ridge Poison Center has noticed a concerning upward trend on the illicit drug market, as a new synthetic class of opioids, known as orphines, has caused deaths and severe health problems in its oftentimes, unwitting users.  

Dr. Chris Holstege, Director of the Blue Ridge Poison Center, said, apart from the symptoms of orphine overdose, what makes them dangerous is how undetectable they are by the majority of health systems in the country.  

“When I’m covering 74 hospitals through the Blue Ridge Poison Center and only ours can detect orphines, that’s an issue,” Holstege said. “And our detection methods are antiquated right now.” 

Orphines were used in the 1960s and 1970s in legitimate medicine in Europe, before several fatal overdoses caused them to be taken off the market. They were detected again in 2019, and ever since, have been difficult to detect by most traditional means, including by fentanyl test strips, with orphines often contained within the notorious drug in quantities bought illicitly. Hospitals that use immunoassays, also cannot detect orphines.  UVA Health, thanks to advanced technology, can detect them.    

Holstege said that college, and even high school students use counterfeit medication that contains fentanyl along with orphines, expecting that with pharmaceuticals, quality control exists where there is none.  

A user who ingests orphines will, according to Holstege, have their pupils decrease in size, become sedated, and even stop breathing. 

Nolaxon injections can successfully alleviate the effects of an orphine overdose if the correct dosage is employed.   

“If you have potent fentanyl analogs, regular naloxone may not work as well,” Holstege said, “but since orphines are laced with other substances, it may not work as intended.” 

Locally in the Charlottesville-Albemarle area, no cases of orphine poisoning have been detected, and unsurprisingly for Holstege, that’s good news. 

“I’m hoping we don’t,” he said. “The biggest concern I have is that many of the sites can’t do analytics on this, its a real problem in society, these new substances that we can’t detect easily.”