"It's like a crawly feeling inside," says Judy*. "You get hot, then chilled, and you feel like you want to run away." The 57-year-old has short dark-grey hair and a haunted expression. She's breathless and sits with her right leg balanced up on her walking stick, rocking it back and forth as she speaks.
Judy explains that she suffers from constant, debilitating pain: arthritis, back problems, fibromyalgia and daily migraines. She was a manager at a major electronics company until 2008, but can no longer work. She often hurts too much even to make it out of bed.
She's taking around 20 different medications each day, including painkillers, antidepressants, sedatives and a skin patch containing a high dose of the opioid drug fentanyl, which she says did not significantly help her pain and which she's now trying to come off. Her physician has been tapering the dose for months, so in addition to her pain she suffers withdrawal symptoms: the chills and crawling dread. Then her clinic announced that it would no longer prescribe any opioids at all, the unintended result of new, stricter measures aimed at clamping down on opioid abuse. Faced with losing access to the drug on which she is physically dependent, she has come to another clinic, Pain Consultants of East Tennessee (PCET) in Knoxville, desperate for help.
Ted Jones, the attending clinician, calls patients like Judy "refugees". He says that he sees "tons" of similar cases. Over 100 million Americans suffer long-term pain. Now they find themselves at the epicentre of two colliding health catastrophes in the USA: chronic pain and opioid abuse.
More ...
https://qz.com/973605/the-opioid-epidemic-could-be-cured-with-virtual-reality-worlds-that-let-patients-escape-their-pain/
Monday, May 29, 2017
Friday, May 26, 2017
The Federal Pain Research Strategy - NIH
The Federal Pain Research Strategy is an effort of the Interagency Pain Research Coordinating Committee and the Office of Pain Policy of the National Institutes of Health to oversee development of a long-term strategic plan for those federal agencies and departments that support pain research. A diverse and balanced group of scientific experts, patient advocates, and federal representatives identified and prioritized research recommendations as a basis for this long-term strategic plan to coordinate and advance the federal pain research agenda. The key areas of prevention of acute and chronic pain, acute pain and acute pain management, the transition from acute to chronic pain, chronic pain and chronic pain management, and disparities in pain and pain care provided the framework for development of the strategy. In addition, a set of cross-cutting research priorities were identified by the task force in topic areas for which similar research recommendations were developed across multiples work groups and merged.
Saturday, May 20, 2017
Even short-term opioid use can set people up for addiction risks | Science News
Even though a sprained ankle rarely needs an opioid, a new study of emergency room patients found that about 7 percent of patients got sent home with a prescription for the potentially addictive painkiller anyway. And the more pills prescribed, the greater the chance the prescription would be refilled, raising concerns about continued use.
The research adds to evidence that it's hard for some people to stop taking the pills even after a brief use. State officials in New Jersey recently enacted a law limiting first-time prescriptions to a five-day supply, and other states should consider similar restrictions, says Kit Delgado, an assistant professor of Emergency Medicine and Epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania.
"The bottom line is that we need to do our best not to expose people to opioids," Delgado says. "And if we do, start with the smallest quantity possible." The research was presented May 17 at the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine's annual meeting in Orlando.
Previous research has found that the more opioids such as hydrocodone and oxycodone are prescribed, the more likely patients are to keep taking them. But previous studies have been too broad to account for differences in diagnoses — for instance, whether people who received refills kept taking the drug simply because they still were in pain, Delgado says. He and colleagues limited their study to prescriptions written after ankle sprains to people who had not used an opioid in the previous six months. Usually, those injuries aren't serious and don't require opioids.
About 7 percent of 53,222 people who visited ERs with ankle sprains in 2011 and 2012 were sent home with an opioid prescription, the researchers found. Patients' experiences varied by state: Less than 2 percent treated in Delaware were prescribed an opioid compared with 16 percent in Mississippi.
The number of pills obtained within a week of those visits also varied greatly, from as few as five to more than 60. Typical prescriptions were for 15 to 40 pills. Those who received prescriptions for 30 pills or more were twice as likely to get refills as those with prescriptions for 15 or fewer, Delgado and colleagues found.
"Because these are patients who have a uniformly minor injury, it emphasizes how much arbitrariness there is in how physicians prescribe opioids," says Michael Barnett, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, who was not involved in the study.
More ...
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/minor-injury-opioid-painkiller-addiction-risks?tgt=nr
The research adds to evidence that it's hard for some people to stop taking the pills even after a brief use. State officials in New Jersey recently enacted a law limiting first-time prescriptions to a five-day supply, and other states should consider similar restrictions, says Kit Delgado, an assistant professor of Emergency Medicine and Epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania.
"The bottom line is that we need to do our best not to expose people to opioids," Delgado says. "And if we do, start with the smallest quantity possible." The research was presented May 17 at the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine's annual meeting in Orlando.
Previous research has found that the more opioids such as hydrocodone and oxycodone are prescribed, the more likely patients are to keep taking them. But previous studies have been too broad to account for differences in diagnoses — for instance, whether people who received refills kept taking the drug simply because they still were in pain, Delgado says. He and colleagues limited their study to prescriptions written after ankle sprains to people who had not used an opioid in the previous six months. Usually, those injuries aren't serious and don't require opioids.
About 7 percent of 53,222 people who visited ERs with ankle sprains in 2011 and 2012 were sent home with an opioid prescription, the researchers found. Patients' experiences varied by state: Less than 2 percent treated in Delaware were prescribed an opioid compared with 16 percent in Mississippi.
The number of pills obtained within a week of those visits also varied greatly, from as few as five to more than 60. Typical prescriptions were for 15 to 40 pills. Those who received prescriptions for 30 pills or more were twice as likely to get refills as those with prescriptions for 15 or fewer, Delgado and colleagues found.
"Because these are patients who have a uniformly minor injury, it emphasizes how much arbitrariness there is in how physicians prescribe opioids," says Michael Barnett, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, who was not involved in the study.
More ...
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/minor-injury-opioid-painkiller-addiction-risks?tgt=nr
Saturday, May 13, 2017
Pain in Animals Workshop 2017 – Creating a Research Roadmap for measuring chronic pain in dogs and cats
Despite recent advances, chronic pain is one of the most poorly understood, under diagnosed, and under treated medical problems facing veterinary medicine today. One of the most frustrating parts of chronic pain therapeutic development in veterinary medicine is the lack of validated methods to measure chronic pain in different species and diseases.
In parallel, translational success has come under the spotlight. Numerous reviews have highlighted a lack of translation of basic research into new approved therapeutics for treatment of persistent pain in humans. The use of spontaneous painful disease in companion animals has been highlighted as one of the changes that could be made to help improve translation of basic science to new therapeutics, acting as a bridge between preclinical and clinical studies, with the goal of reducing the failure rates of human clinical trials, thus accelerating the approval of new therapeutics. Aspects that will undermine the utility of the 'spontaneous disease pain' model are the lack of valid outcome measures and the lack of knowledge of opportunities.
More ...
https://paw2017.com/
In parallel, translational success has come under the spotlight. Numerous reviews have highlighted a lack of translation of basic research into new approved therapeutics for treatment of persistent pain in humans. The use of spontaneous painful disease in companion animals has been highlighted as one of the changes that could be made to help improve translation of basic science to new therapeutics, acting as a bridge between preclinical and clinical studies, with the goal of reducing the failure rates of human clinical trials, thus accelerating the approval of new therapeutics. Aspects that will undermine the utility of the 'spontaneous disease pain' model are the lack of valid outcome measures and the lack of knowledge of opportunities.
More ...
https://paw2017.com/
Wednesday, May 10, 2017
The ACTTION–APS–AAPM Pain Taxonomy (AAAPT) Multidimensional Approach to Classifying Acute Pain Conditions - The Journal of Pain
As a complement to a taxonomy recently developed for chronic pain, the ACTTION public-private partnership with the US Food and Drug Administration, the APS, and the AAPM convened a consensus meeting of experts to develop an acute pain taxonomy using prevailing evidence. Key issues pertaining to the distinct nature of acute pain are presented followed by the agreed-upon taxonomy. The ACTTION-APS-AAPM Acute Pain Taxonomy will include the following dimensions: 1) core criteria, 2) common features, 3) modulating factors, 4) impact/functional consequences, and 5) putative pathophysiologic pain mechanisms. Future efforts will consist of working groups utilizing this taxonomy to develop diagnostic criteria for a comprehensive set of acute pain conditions.
http://www.jpain.org/article/S1526-5900(17)30464-9/fulltext?
http://www.jpain.org/article/S1526-5900(17)30464-9/fulltext?
Tuesday, May 02, 2017
The opioid epidemic could be cured with virtual-reality worlds that let patients escape their pain — Quartz
"It's like a crawly feeling inside," says Judy*. "You get hot, then chilled, and you feel like you want to run away." The 57-year-old has short dark-grey hair and a haunted expression. She's breathless and sits with her right leg balanced up on her walking stick, rocking it back and forth as she speaks.
Judy explains that she suffers from constant, debilitating pain: arthritis, back problems, fibromyalgia and daily migraines. She was a manager at a major electronics company until 2008, but can no longer work. She often hurts too much even to make it out of bed.
She's taking around 20 different medications each day, including painkillers, antidepressants, sedatives and a skin patch containing a high dose of the opioid drug fentanyl, which she says did not significantly help her pain and which she's now trying to come off. Her physician has been tapering the dose for months, so in addition to her pain she suffers withdrawal symptoms: the chills and crawling dread. Then her clinic announced that it would no longer prescribe any opioids at all, the unintended result of new, stricter measures aimed at clamping down on opioid abuse. Faced with losing access to the drug on which she is physically dependent, she has come to another clinic, Pain Consultants of East Tennessee (PCET) in Knoxville, desperate for help.
More ...
https://qz.com/973605/the-opioid-epidemic-could-be-cured-with-virtual-reality-worlds-that-let-patients-escape-their-pain/?
Judy explains that she suffers from constant, debilitating pain: arthritis, back problems, fibromyalgia and daily migraines. She was a manager at a major electronics company until 2008, but can no longer work. She often hurts too much even to make it out of bed.
She's taking around 20 different medications each day, including painkillers, antidepressants, sedatives and a skin patch containing a high dose of the opioid drug fentanyl, which she says did not significantly help her pain and which she's now trying to come off. Her physician has been tapering the dose for months, so in addition to her pain she suffers withdrawal symptoms: the chills and crawling dread. Then her clinic announced that it would no longer prescribe any opioids at all, the unintended result of new, stricter measures aimed at clamping down on opioid abuse. Faced with losing access to the drug on which she is physically dependent, she has come to another clinic, Pain Consultants of East Tennessee (PCET) in Knoxville, desperate for help.
More ...
https://qz.com/973605/the-opioid-epidemic-could-be-cured-with-virtual-reality-worlds-that-let-patients-escape-their-pain/?
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