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Prince, the music icon who struggled with debilitating hip pain during his career, died from an accidental overdose of self-administered fentanyl, a type of synthetic opiate, officials in Minnesota said Thursday. The news ended weeks of speculation about the sudden death of the musician, who had a reputation for clean living but who appears to have developed a dependency on medications to treat his pain. Authorities have yet to discuss how he came to be in possession of the fentanyl and whether it had been prescribed by a doctor. (Eligon and Kovaleski, 6/2)

A medical examiner's report released Thursday said Prince Rogers Nelson died of "fentanyl toxicity." The superstar's April death was an accident, the report said; the drug had been self-administered. Fentanyl is an opioid drug used to treat severe pain. It's more powerful than morphine, and often comes in the form of a skin patch or injection. Its role in Prince's death puts the musician's story at the center of an epidemic that has claimed tens of thousands of lives each year in the United States. (Collins, 6/3)

Whether Prince knew he was taking fentanyl is unclear. An attorney who previously represented two of Prince’s siblings has said that the musician had used Percocet and cocaine in the past. “Most of the people we’re seeing are dying unsuspecting that they used fentanyl,” said Traci Green, deputy director of the Boston Medical Center Injury Prevention Center. Because the drug “is extremely fast-acting, [Prince] probably died quickly,” she said. “There’s not a lot of time to intervene to reverse that.” (Maher and Campo-Flores, 6/2)

Kent Bailey, head of the DEA in Minneapolis, said the agency will continue investigating along with Carver County authorities and the U.S. Attorney’s Office. He declined to offer details, but said “rest assured, we will be thorough.” Legal experts say the focus of the investigation will now probably turn to whether the source or sources of the fentanyl were legal or not. Often, such investigations include grand jury subpoenas for records or for testimony from individuals. (Tarm and Forliti, 6/3)

Prince's death earlier this year was the result of an overdose of opioids, the Associated Press reported on Thursday, citing a law enforcement official. Now confirmed by the medical examiner, Prince has just become a key example of a problem that has spiked in recent years — and that has become a key undercurrent in American politics. The most recent annual data on opioid overdoses comes from 2014 by way of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At the end of 2015, the CDC released figures for that year and the trend back to 1999. Sixty-one percent of drug-overdose deaths in 2014 involved some sort of opioid, including heroin. The recent uptick in heroin overdoses is obvious, but the longer-term growth of opioid deaths is also visible. (Bump, 6/2)

Prince's death from an overdose of the powerful opioid fentanyl is another example of the national opioid epidemic driven by prescription painkillers. "This was a man in his 50s who may have been struggling with pain and took a very potent opioid analgesic and died accidentally from an overdose," said Dr. Barbarajean Magnani, pathologist-in-chief at Tufts Medical Center who read a one-page autopsy report released Thursday. "Celebrities bring it to our attention, but we see this every day. We have to re-examine the way we're treating pain." (6/3)

Minnesota officials reported on Thursday that Prince died in April of an overdose of the opiate fentanyl. The authorities have not revealed how the musician obtained the drug or whether a doctor had prescribed it. But it has been reported that he had hip surgery in the mid-2000s and may have still been in pain. Fentanyl has become a source of concern for government agencies and law enforcement officials as death rates from fentanyl-related overdoses and seizures of the drug have risen in several states. Here’s what we know about the drug. (Browich, 6/2)

Fentanyl was first introduced under the name Sublimaze in the 1960s, and was initially administered via an intravenous anesthetic. Nowadays, patients can get a fentanyl dosage via tablets, patches, and injections -- or even lozenges referred to as “lollipops.” The drug is often prescribed for patients dealing with chronic pain from late-stage cancer, and is also used as an anesthetic during heart surgery. (Ng, 6/2)

Prince is the latest victim of the opioid epidemic. The singer accidentally overdosed on the powerful painkiller fentanyl, according to autopsy results released Thursday. (6/2)

Dr. James Gill walked through the morgue in Farmington, Connecticut, recently, past the dock where the bodies come in, past the tissue donations area, and stopped outside the autopsy room. "We kind of have a typical board listing all of the decedents for the day," Gill said, pointing to the list of names on a dry erase board. "Overdose, overdose, overdose, overdose overdose. That's just for today." Gill is the chief medical examiner for the state of Connecticut, and of the nine bodies in his custody that day, four were the remains of the people who likely died from an accidental drug overdose. A fifth was a probable suicide involving drugs. It was a sad, but typical day, he explained, with a practical consequence for the state's morgue: Gill is running out of room to store bodies. (Cohen, 6/3)