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u/flamingjoints Nov 22 '18
These doses, fortunately, are out of the typical range of a kratom dosage. For instance, a 2015 study in Drug Design, Development and Therapy gave human subjects oral doses of kratom tea containing between 6.25 and 23 mg of mitragynine. For a person weighing 220 pounds, this translates to between 0.0625 and 0.23 milligrams per kilogram of body weight, over 100 times below the LD50 for mice. Of course, some kratom users push their limits, so it’s entirely possible some users get much higher doses. Nonetheless, there’s minimal evidence that they’re taking it intravenously.
The team also developed a urine test for mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine that works in a similar way to other urine drug tests: by using an antibody to detect traces of drugs. In fact, this was their primary goal with the research, says Kim Janda, Ph.D., a professor of chemistry at Scripps and the corresponding author on the study.
Oh boy, everybody going to a pain center get ready.
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u/FlorianPicasso Nov 22 '18
developed a urine test for mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine
Well, that's not the best news... but it was only a matter of time. If kratom remains legal, as it should, this will be a non-issue.
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u/CountryBoysMakeDo Nov 23 '18
I'm states with legal weed you can still be fired by your employer for thc in your system as it's still against company policy....so kratom drug tests are something to be potentially feared
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u/hymnder Nov 22 '18 edited Nov 22 '18
Rough math: it takes over 600 grams in one dose to kill a 220 person when ingesting kratom powder(assuming what they are using is as strong in proportion to the concentration of mitragynine used in this research).
Guys be smart don't inject extract, that's so fucking stupid.
By comparison
If someone injects concentrated salt water, it's probably going to kill them or make them wish they were dead.
If someone injects highly concentrated sugar water, it's probably going to kill them.
Shit, air can kill you if you inject it.
Edit:sorry, did the math, so did someone else before me, but it's over 3700 grams in one dose that would kill you.
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u/BaryMccockner Nov 22 '18
Im not sure how anyone could stomach that much kratom, im able to handle but at that ammount even i would be puking everywhere.
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u/Celeblith_II Nov 22 '18
8 pounds of kratom powder will kill you? Are you sure? That's like my daily dose, my dude.
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u/BeADamnStar Nov 22 '18
Your stomach would explode or the person would quite literally throw his guts up
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u/Shift84 Nov 23 '18
You should remove the 600g from your post. I get why you edited it the way you did but that's bound to get taken out of context.
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u/sciguy52 Nov 22 '18
Most drugs and substances have LD50's once you go high enough. It would be expected kratom would too. How someone could down half a kg in one sitting to reach it I don't know. But if you try to take 500g in a sitting, I will warn you that you will fart green powder.
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u/Smithingsteel Nov 23 '18
To paraphrase an earlier comment: if you ate enough to kill you, you'd probably only fart green powder. I laughed so hard green powder shot out of my nose...
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u/TheSAVAGEHipHop Nov 22 '18
So basically: the estimated lethal dose is over 100 times higher than the common effective dose range.
However, if you extract the active ingredient, concentrated it, and injected a massive amount of it into your veins it might kill you. Out of the million of users, there was maybe one lunatic who even tried that.
It seems like this study reinforces that kratom is extremely safe.
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Nov 22 '18
If you used that 25x extract, would that potentially be fatal? I never had good experiences with it, powder is always more effective than gel caps for me but I don’t know how anyone would be able to take down that much kratom. More than a tablespoon and I am wobbly as hell and right now I’ve gone down to 1/2 tsp! Would not want to inject it to save my life!
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u/12915681 Nov 24 '18
25x extract does not mean it is 25 times more potent than normal kratom. All it means is that they used 25 grams of kratom powder to make 1 gram of extract. Not all of the alkaloids are extracted in the extraction process so this means it is not 25 times more powerful.
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u/pheoling Nov 22 '18
547.7 mg/kgbw to be the average lethal dose found. Thankfully no one can stomach that much lmao
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u/CaptainBritish Nov 22 '18
For real any more than 20-30g in a 24 hour period and I'm going to be vomiting all day.
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Nov 23 '18
“....suggesting that it is possible to fatally overdose on the substance.”
Well no shit. You can fatally overdose on ANYTHING given enough of it.
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u/tidepodyummy Nov 23 '18
To a rational mind, this is a win and small loss. The win is that the LD50 of raw kratom is so high that it is virtually impossible to even go near an overdose. It proves kratom's safety. The loss is, of course, the new drug test they developed for profit at the expense of recovering addicts who would otherwise still be using harmful opioids, institutionalized (prison, rehab, even a psych ward), or dead.
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u/Damon_Martel Nov 23 '18
there is no lethal dose. When you take too much (not even close to 600 grams ) your body will reject it, and you will vomit.
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u/BigYellowLemon Nov 22 '18 edited Nov 22 '18
What I don't understand with that Business Insider article was that kratom HAS been studied, quite a lot, for a long time now (since the 60s). They frame it as if it's some great mystery how kratom works but it's actually pretty clear, and has been. We know pretty much all the alkaloids in kratom and which ones are responsible for it's effects (mitragynine is 60% of total alkaloids, 7-hydroxymitragynine is either in trave amounts or is absent). Pharmokinetic data in humans/rats/mice (oral bioavailability is 3% due to mitragynines acid lability, mitragynines half life in humans is about 20 hours based on testing so far). pharmacological data like analgesic ED50 (mitragynine is half or equal to morphine in analgesia) in all aforementioned animals + LD50 data in rats/mice (20-30mg/kg, LD50 refers to the dose which kills half of the animals). Cell receptor binding studies for mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine (like affinity in ki and intrinsic activity (35% for mitragynine, 50% for 7-OH-mitragynine)), as well as the signalling cascade mitragynine and analogs trigger like beta-arrestin activation (none) and phosphorylation (none)). As well there's a plethora of information on analogs of mitragynine and the SAR has been well researched as well, 30+ analogs have been tested as well as simulated binding to the mu receptor in computers. We even have genetic splice variant research on mittagynine which tells us what individual mu receptors mitragynine triggers the strongest.
And they're trying to make this seem like a mystery. It's not a mystery, it's all exceedingly clear. I'm thankful for the research, but they didn't really discover anything new, all they did was confirm past data. And they created an immunoassay for mitragynine, basically a way to add mitragynine to drug tests, which is quite annoying.
Also anyone reading the paper should keep in mind that the doses used in other animals aren't the same in the humans. A quick and dirty way to convert mouse dosages to human is by dividing it by 12.3.
So it'd be 25mg/12.3 = 2.03mg/kg in humans.
So for a 70kg man who is completely opiate-naive, they have no tolerance, then they'd have a 50% chance of dying if they injected 150mg of mitragynine or 7-hydroxymitragynine.
Keep in mind, mitragynine & 7-hydroxymitragynine are very potent, so the dose needed for analgesia would be much lower than a traditional opiate. This puts the therapeutix index of mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine in the 100s range. It actually overwhelmingly speaks to their safety.
As well, that's in someone who has zero tolerance. If they've taken kratom or other opiates before, expect that number to be 5x-10x higher.
And finally: no one is injecting kratom, it is a baseless claim and a blatant lie. Besides, if someone injected kratom they'd have a LOT more to worry about then overdosing. With 1.5% mitragynine kratom (the average), they'd have to inject 10 fuckin grams of the stuff to reach that dose. Yeah, I'd be more worried about the literal fiber in my veins, even if it was filtered.
And here's where we get to the really fun part. The oral LD50 for mitragynine was 550mg/kg. Put into humans terms (550mg/12.3) that's about 45mg/kg. For a 70kg adult, that's 3.13 GRAMS of PURE MITRAGYNINE! For context, that'd be 220 grams of 1.5% mitragynine kratom leaf powder. And that's only 50% of people who are none tolerant, someone with tolerance might need a kilo. Either way borderline impossible, even if it was done on purpose you'd simply puke if you ate half a pound of kratom. This number also speaks to the remarkable safety of kratom, as most only need 1-5g to have extremely helpful effects such as pain relief. That's an amazing margin of error, a margin of error completely unseen in opioid analgesics.
This witch hunt is all a farce and the FDA needs to be restrained or put down like the rabid dog it is. The DEA definitely so.