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Addiction Recovery Bulletin
TIME WILL TELL –
Jan. 30, 2025 – It’s the first new pharmaceutical approach to treating pain in more than 20 years, offering an alternative to both opioids and over-the-counter medications like ibuprofen and acetaminophen. Two studies in more than 870 patients with acute pain following foot and abdominal surgeries showed Vertex’s pill provided more relief than a dummy pill but didn’t outperform a common opioid-acetaminophen combination pill.
“It’s not a slam dunk on effectiveness,” said Michael Schuh of the Mayo Clinic
Vertex began researching the drug in the 2000s, when drug overdoses were rocketing upward, principally driven by mass prescribing of opioid painkillers for common ailments like arthritis and back pain. Prescriptions have fallen sharply in the last decade and the current wave of the opioid epidemic is mainly due to illicit fentanyl, not pharmaceutical medicines.
Opioids reduce pain by binding to receptors in the brain that receive nerve signals from different parts of the body. Those chemical interactions also give rise to opioids’ addictive effects.
Vertex’s drug works differently, blocking proteins that trigger pain signals that are later sent to the brain.
CONTINUE@WFLA
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