FDA approves first new type of pain medication in 25 years
Suzetrigine is a prescription pill taken every 12 hours after a larger starter dose
FDA approves first new type of pain medication in 25 years
Suzetrigine is a prescription pill taken every 12 hours after a larger starter doseThe US Food and Drug Administration signed off Thursday on the first new type of pain reliever to be approved in more than two decades.
The drug, suzetrigine, is a 50-milligram prescription pill that’s taken every 12 hours after a larger starter dose. It will be sold under the brand name Journavx.
“A new non-opioid analgesic therapeutic class for acute pain offers an opportunity to mitigate certain risks associated with using an opioid for pain and provides patients with another treatment option,” Dr. Jacqueline Corrigan-Curay, acting director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in a news release. “This action and the agency’s designations to expedite the drug’s development and review underscore FDA’s commitment to approving safe and effective alternatives to opioids for pain About 80 million Americans fill prescriptions each year for medications to treat new instances of moderate to severe pain, according to a study by Vertex Pharmaceuticals, the company that developed the new drug; about half those prescriptions are written for opioid medications, which can lead to dependence and addiction.
Suzetrigine is the first new painkiller approved in the US since Celebrex, a type of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug called a Cox-2 inhibitor, which was approved in 199
Multiple parts of the body are involved in the sensation of pain, explains Dr. Sergio Bergese, an anesthesiologist at Stony Brook University’s Renaissance School of Medicine. Nerve cells carry an electrical signal from the site of tissue damage up to the brain, which perceives the signal as pai
Unlike opioid medications, which dull the sensation of pain in the brain, suzetrigine works by preventing pain-signaling nerves around the body from firing in the first place.n.8.This drug, what it is doing is interrupting that path, so even though the tissue injury exists, the brain doesn’t know,” Bergese said.
And crucially, suzetrigine creates no euphoria or high like opioids sometimes can, so doctors believe there’s no potential for it to create addiction or dependence in people who use it.
The medication was discovered after researchers learned about a family of fire walkers in Pakistan and discovered that they lacked a gene allowing pain signals to fire in their skin. Members of this family could walk over hot coals without flinching
Still, it took scientists 25 years to figure out how to exploit that pain-conducting mechanism to develop a medication.
“Neurons talk to each other by producing series of nerve impulses, like a Morse code,” said Dr. Stephen Waxman, who directs the Center for Neuroscience and Regeneration Research at the Yale School of Medicine. “And nerve impulses are produced by tiny molecular batteries within the membranes of neurons. The molecular batteries are called sodium channels.”
Suzetrigine works by closing one sodium channel that conducts only pain signals.
There have been many false starts along the way to finding a drug that could block one specific sodium channel. Suzetrigine’s approval means other drugs that could work even better are likely to follow, Waxman said.
