{"id":20606,"date":"2026-01-24T17:38:03","date_gmt":"2026-01-24T16:38:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/?p=20606"},"modified":"2026-02-17T20:16:40","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T19:16:40","slug":"euro-den-plus-the-european-drug-emergencies-network-plus-protocol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/2026\/01\/euro-den-plus-the-european-drug-emergencies-network-plus-protocol\/","title":{"rendered":"Euro-DEN Plus: The European Drug Emergencies Network Plus Protocol"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"d-flex align-items-baseline\">\n<div class=\"article-tags align-items-baseline\">\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.euda.europa.eu\/themes\/custom\/euda\/logo.svg\" alt=\"Home\" width=\"351\" height=\"104\" \/><\/span><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"field field--name-field-pub-local field--type-string field--label-hidden\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\">Lisbon<\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"field field--name-field-pub-date field--type-timestamp field--label-hidden\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\"><i class=\"fa fa-calendar\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><\/i><time class=\"datetime\" datetime=\"2026-01-22T11:58:24+00:00\">22.01.2026<\/time><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<article class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"col-12 col-lg-8 col-xxl-9 mb-5 mb-xl-0 mb-lg-0\" data-pdf-col=\"12\">\n<div class=\"content-item\">\n<div class=\"field field--name-field-summary field--type-text-long field--label-above\">\n<h2 class=\"field__label mb-3\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\">Introduction<\/span><\/h2>\n<div class=\"field__item\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\">Illicit drugs and new psychoactive substances (NPS) are commonly used across Europe.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\">Acute toxicity from their use, along with acute toxicity from the non-medical use (misuse) of<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\">prescription medicines, can lead to emergency department (ED) presentations with the<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\">potential for significant morbidity and\/or mortality. For the purpose of this protocol, the term<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\">\u2018recreational drug\u2019 encompasses these three substance groups. A previous study showed<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\">that there are limited systematic data available at a national or international level on acute<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\">harm related to the use of recreational drugs (Heyerdahl et al., 2014). It is not possible to<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\">easily collect these data from national\/central sources because of the limitations in the<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\">coding of acute drug toxicity using coding systems such as ICD-10 (Wood et al., 2019). This<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\">lack of systematic data on acute drug toxicity represented a significant gap in the public<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\">health understanding of the implications of drug use in Europe.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\">To address this gap, the European Drug Emergencies Network (Euro-DEN) project was set<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\">up in 2013, originally funded for 12 months by the DPIP\/ISEC Programme of the European<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\">Union. The project has continued as the Euro-DEN Plus project, with support from the<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\">EMCDDA\/EUDA. The aim of the project is to increase knowledge on ED presentations with<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\">acute toxicity related to the use of recreational drugs across Europe, in order to contribute,<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\">along with other sources of information, to monitoring and act as an early warning system on<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\">drug-related harms, as well as to inform responses and policies in Europe.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\">A network of sentinel centres across Europe was developed to collect systematic data on<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\">acute drug and NPS toxicity presentations. Data are collected using a purpose-built<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\">representative minimum dataset (Wood et al., 2014). These data are collected from routine<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\">hospital medical records, with no additional information collected over and above that<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\">collected as part of routine clinical care. Data were initially collected in an Excel spreadsheet<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\">(from 2013-2022). In 2022, the project adopted the secure and EU-approved REDCap online<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\">database for data collection. The data are collated by the Euro-DEN Plus coordinating centre<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\">in London, UK. The EUDA provides support with data quality control for the Euro-DEN<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\">dataset.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\">The initial Euro-DEN project involved 16 centres in 10 European countries. Over the lifetime<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\">of the Euro-DEN Plus project, 53 centres in 27 countries have contributed data. In 2025,<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\">there were 37 active centres in 21 countries, and over 90 000 presentations were recorded<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\">in the database. The description of the centres is available in the Source table section of the<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\">Euro-DEN Plus data explorer (EUDA, 2025). The location of the centres who reported data<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\">for the year 2024 is presented in the map below (Figure 1).<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\"><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\"><strong>To access the full document:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<ol style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<li><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\"><strong>Click on the \u2018Source\u2019 link below.<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\"><strong>An image\u00a0 \u2013 the front page of the full document will appear.<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\"><strong>Click on the image to open the full document.<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #0000ff;\">Source:\u00a0<a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/2026\/01\/euro-den-plus-the-european-drug-emergencies-network-plus-protocol\/euro-den-plus-protocol\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-20607\">euro-den-plus-protocol<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lisbon 22.01.2026 Introduction Illicit drugs and new psychoactive substances (NPS) are commonly used across Europe. Acute toxicity from their use, along with acute toxicity from the non-medical use (misuse) of prescription medicines, can lead to emergency department (ED) presentations with the potential for significant morbidity and\/or mortality. For the purpose of this protocol, the term [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,17,138],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drug-use-various-effects","category-europe-uk","category-psychedelics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20606"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20610,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20606\/revisions\/20610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}