More details have surfaced online about Prince’s untimely death back in 2016. According to the Associated Press, a toxicology report from his autopsy revealed that the singer had an “exceedingly high” level of fentanyl in his body when he died. While this shouldn't come as a shocker as we already knew Fentanyl played a part in Prince's death, we just didn't know how bad it really was.
“The amount in his blood is exceedingly high, even for somebody who is a chronic pain patient on fentanyl patches,” said Dr. Lewis Nelson, chairman of emergency medicine at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. He called the fentanyl concentrations “a pretty clear smoking gun.”
Reports say the concentration of fentanyl in Prince's blood was 67.8 micrograms per liter, and to put that into context, people have died with levels ranging anywhere from 3 micrograms to 58 micrograms. In addition, Prince's liver had a concentration of 450 micrograms per kilogram, which you can guess is outrageously high. The report notes that levels above 69 micrograms per kilogram “seem to represent overdose or fatal toxicity cases,” and he had about 7 times that. There was also a potentially lethal amount of fentanyl in Prince’s stomach as well, which means Prince likely took the drug orally experts say.
Prince hasn't been the only musician to be taken away from us too soon by the drug Fentanyl. Both Lil Peep and Tom Petty were both found to have traces of the deadly drug in their bodies as well at the time of their deaths.
We’ll continue to keep you posted on any more info moving forward.
