FLORIDA: Anna Nicole Smith died of an accidental overdose.

A detailed post mortem has revealed the former Playboy Playmate took at least nine prescription drugs while struggling with various health problems in her last days.

These included a powerful sleep syrup she was known to drink out of the bottle after enduring stomach flu.

She also had a high fever and an infection on her buttocks from repeated injections.

Broward County Medical Examiner Dr Joshua Perper found that in the days before her death, the 39-year-old had been taking large amounts of the seldom-prescribed sedative chloral hydrate, which also contributed to the 1962 overdose death of Smith's idol, Marilyn Monroe.

Police found no apparent sign of foul play, and the medical examiner ruled Smith's death probably was not a suicide because people who take their own lives typically use much more lethal drugs than chloral hydrate.

Rather, he said, Smith might have been simply unaware that the sedative could be fatal in combination with the multiple other prescriptions she was taking in normal doses for anxiety, depression and insomnia.

The report also noted that the former Playboy model refused to go to a hospital three days before her death on February 8.

She chose to endure her illness in a hotel suite littered with pill bottles, soda cans, SlimFast, nicotine gum and an open box of Tamiflu tablets.

Contributing factors to her death included her weakened condition from a stomach flu and a 105-degree fever brought on by a pus-filled infection on her buttocks from repeated injection of other drugs.

"She may have taken the dosages she was accustomed to, but succumbed because she was already weakened," Dr Perper said in his report.

He added: "Miss Smith has a long history of prescription drug abuse in the past."