People at risk of overdose could be fitted with an anti-opioid implant

A pacemaker-like device that is implanted under the skin and automatically releases an antidote when it detects an opioid overdose could save lives, its designers claim.

The implant has already been successfully tested in pigs. “In general, we observe that overdoses treated with the [device] are much less severe, with minimal lasting effects to overall health,” John Rogers at Northwestern University in Illinois and his colleagues write in their paper.

In the past two decades, the number of deaths from drug overdoses has…