Prince had an extremely high level of a powerful synthetic opioid in his body at the time of his death in April 2016, according to a toxicology report obtained by The Associated Press.
The confidential toxicology information was reported less than a week after the Carver County Attorney Mark Metz stated that the death investigation remains active. Metz is still deciding whether to charge someone with a crime.
The Midwest Medical Examiner’s Office in Ramsey, Minn., had ruled “fentanyl toxicity” as the superstar musician’s cause of death in its public autopsy report in June 2016. It also ruled his death to be an accident, and had provided no details about the concentration of the “self-administered” drug in his body.
According to the AP, the confidential toxicology report indicates that “concentration of fentanyl in Prince’s blood was 67.8 micrograms per liter.” As the wire service notes, “fatalities have been documented in people with blood levels ranging from three to 58 micrograms per liter.”
“The amount in his blood is exceedingly high, even for somebody who is a chronic pain patient on fentanyl patches,” Dr. Lewis Nelson, chairman of emergency medicine at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, told the wire service.
Prince tragically died in April 2016.
