If you have a bad experience after taking kratom, can medical professionals help?

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When someone presents to an emergency department after having taken an unknown drug, screening is typically undertaken. Yet for kratom, which last year accounted for over a thousand fold increase in ED visits, no screen is available. Substance use disorder expert Eric Strain at Johns Hopkins says that leaves clinicians with few options.

Strain: We don't routinely test for kratom or mitragynine or 7 hydroxymitragynine so I think our usual tests for drugs of abuse are really starting to become less relevant compared to what's being used out in the community, be it kratom or xylazine or something else. And so we need to be basing our evaluations on clinical presentation rather than a lab test.  :26

Strain says since now many products marketed as kratom contain the synthetic 7 hydroxymitragynine, which has potentially much more serious consequences, consumers should be wary, and inform someone else of their kratom use in the event that urgent medical attention is needed. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.