As need grows for painkiller overdose treatment, firms up prices

LOS ANGELES — Aimee Dunkle began helping to distribute the drug naloxone — the life-saving antidote to prescription painkiller overdoses — after her son died.

Naloxone works by blocking the effect that painkillers like OxyContin and fentanyl and heroin have in the brain and reversing the slowed breathing and unconsciousness that come with an overdose.

The Solace Foundation in Orange County, the group that Dunkle co-founded, says the drug has been used since February to reverse 128 overdoses that otherwise probably would have been fatal.

[...] as the demand for naloxone has risen — overdose deaths now total 130 every day, or roughly the capacity of a Boeing 737 — the drug’s price has soared.

Not long ago, a dose of the decades-old generic drug cost little more than a dollar.