Pentamorphone is a semi-synthetic opiate

Opiate

In medicine, the term opiate describes any of the narcotic opioid alkaloids found as natural products in the opium poppy plant.-Overview:Opiates are so named because they are constituents or derivatives of constituents found in opium, which is processed from the latex sap of the opium poppy,...

 derivative related to compounds such as morphine

Morphine

Morphine is a potent opiate analgesic medication and is considered to be the prototypical opioid. It was first isolated in 1804 by Friedrich Sertürner, first distributed by same in 1817, and first commercially sold by Merck in 1827, which at the time was a single small chemists' shop. It was more...

, hydromorphone

Hydromorphone

Hydromorphone, a more common synonym for dihydromorphinone, commonly a hydrochloride is a very potent centrally-acting analgesic drug of the opioid class. It is a derivative of morphine, to be specific, a hydrogenated ketone thereof and, therefore, a semi-synthetic drug...

 and oxymorphone

Oxymorphone

Oxymorphone or 14-Hydroxydihydromorphinone is a powerful semi-synthetic opioid analgesic first developed in Germany circa 1914, patented in the USA by Endo Pharmaceuticals in 1955 and introduced to the United States market in January 1959 and other countries around the same time...

. Developed in 1984, it is a potent opioid analgesic

Analgesic

An analgesic is any member of the group of drugs used to relieve pain . The word analgesic derives from Greek an- and algos ....

 several times stronger than fentanyl, and with a similarly fast onset of effects and short duration of action. It was found to produce relatively little respiratory depression compared to other potent opioid agonists, but its analgesic effects were somewhat disappointing in human trials, and while pentamorphone had some slight advantages over fentanyl these were not sufficient to warrant its introduction into clinical use.