OSU Medicine has issued a media advisory on a new emerging synthetic opioid known as Cychlorphine that is causing alarm among health and law enforcement officials across Oklahoma, with experts warning of its extreme potency and growing presence in the illicit drug supply.

According to the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics, Cychlorphine has already been identified in the state and linked to at least one fatal overdose. The drug may be significantly more potent than fentanyl and, in some cases, more difficult to reverse with standard overdose treatments.

“Cychlorphine represents a dangerous shift in the opioid crisis,” said Dr. Rachel Wirginis, board-certified addiction medicine and family medicine physician at the OSU Addiction Recovery Clinic in Tulsa, and associate program director of the Addiction Medicine Fellowship Program at OSU Center for Health Sciences. “We are seeing increasingly powerful synthetic opioids that require rapid recognition and aggressive intervention to prevent fatal outcomes.”