WILLIAMSON, West Virginia — This town on the eastern border of Kentucky has 3,150 residents, one hotel, one gas station, one fire station — and about 50 opiate overdoses each month.
On the first weekend of each month, when public benefits like disability get paid out, the local fire chief estimates the city sees about half a million dollars in drug sales. The area is poor — 29 percent of county residents live in poverty, and, amid the retreat of the coal industry, the unemployment rate was 12.2 percent when I visited last August— and those selling pills are not always who you'd expect.
"Elderly folks who depend on blood pressure medications, who can't afford them, they're selling their [painkillers] to get money to buy their blood pressure drug," Williamson fire chief Joey Carey told me when I visited Williamson. "The opioids are still $5 or $10 copays. They can turn around and sell those pills for $5 or $10 each."
Opioids are everywhere in Williamson, because chronic pain is everywhere in Williamson.
Dino Beckett opened a primary care clinic there in March 2014, on the same street with the hotel and the gas station. A native of the area with a close-cropped beard and a slight Southern drawl, Beckett sees the pain of Williamson day in and day out.
He sees older women who suffer from compression fractures up and down their spines, the result of osteoporosis. He sees men who mined coal for decades, who now experience persistent, piercing low back pain. "We have a population that works in coal mines or mine-supporting industries doing lots of manual labor, lifting equipment," he says. "Doing that for 10 to 12 hours a day for 15 to 20 years, or more, is a bad deal."
Beckett sees more pain than doctors who practice elsewhere. Nationally, 10.1 percent of Americans rate their health as "fair" or "poor." In Mingo County, where Williamson is, that figure stands at 38.9 percent.
Williamson has some of West Virginia's highest rates of obesity, disability, and arthritis — and that is in a state that already ranks among the worst in those categories compared with the rest of the nation. An adult in Williamson has twice the chance of dying from an injury as the average American.
This is why the opioid crisis is so hard to handle, here and in so many communities: The underlying drugs are often being prescribed for real reasons.
More ...
https://www.vox.com/2017/6/5/15111936/opioid-crisis-pain-west-virginia
Thursday, June 22, 2017
Tuesday, June 13, 2017
Neurobiology of Pain - Journal - Elsevier
Neurobiology of Pain is an international journal for the publication of basic and translational research on the mechanisms of acute and chronic pain. It focuses on experimental studies of pain mechanisms at every level from molecular and cellular to brain imaging and behavioural. The journal primarily publishes original basic and translational studies, but will consider clinical studies which address mechanistic aspects of pain based on experimental approaches in human subjects.
The scope of the journal addresses all areas of pain neurobiology, including:
- Molecular substrates and cell signaling
- Genetics and epigenetics
- Spinal and brain circuitry
- Structural and physiological plasticity
- Developmental aspects
- Laboratory models of pain
- Brain imaging
- Neuroinflammation
- Pain and cognition
- Pain and emotion
Wednesday, June 07, 2017
Your mind can be trained to control chronic pain. But it will cost you - STAT
There was plenty to blame: the car wreck that broke his back. The job pouring concrete that shattered his spine a second time. The way he tore up his insides with cigarettes, booze, cocaine, and opioids.
It all amounted to this: Carl White was in pain. All the time. And nothing helped — not the multiple surgeries, nor the self-medication, not the wife and daughter who supported him and relied on him.
Then White enrolled in a pain management clinic that taught him some of his physical torment was in his head — and he could train his brain to control it. It's a philosophy that dates back decades, to the 1970s or even earlier. It fell out of vogue when new generations of potent pain pills came on the market; they were cheaper, worked faster, felt more modern.
But the opioid epidemic has soured many patients and doctors on the quick fix. And interest is again surging in a treatment method called biopsychosocial pain management, which trains patients to manage chronic pain with tools ranging from physical therapy to biofeedback to meditation. It helped Carl White, a 43-year-old social worker from Leroy, Minn.
The catch? It can take weeks and cost tens of thousands of dollars — and thus remains out of reach for most patients with chronic pain.
"We've been banging our heads on the wall, and banging our fists on the door, trying to get insurers to pay for this," said Dr. Bob Twillman, executive director for the Academy of Integrative Pain Management. "For the most part, they will not."
Chronic pain affects nearly 50 million Americans, according to the American Pain Foundation. The largest drivers include migraines, arthritis, and nerve damage — but in many cases, emotional trauma also contributes to the sense of misery.
"We have a lot of people in this country who are unhappy, isolated, and hurting," said Jeannie Sperry, a psychologist who co-chairs the division of addictions, transplant, and pain at Mayo Clinic. "Depression hurts. Anxiety hurts. It's rare for people to have chronic pain without one of these co-morbidities."
Indeed, chronic pain has a substantial psychological element: Being in pain often leads to self-imposed isolation. That loss of a social network then leads to anxiety, depression, and a tendency to catastrophize the pain — so that it's all a patient can think about.
More …
https://www.statnews.com/2017/05/30/chronic-pain-management/
It all amounted to this: Carl White was in pain. All the time. And nothing helped — not the multiple surgeries, nor the self-medication, not the wife and daughter who supported him and relied on him.
Then White enrolled in a pain management clinic that taught him some of his physical torment was in his head — and he could train his brain to control it. It's a philosophy that dates back decades, to the 1970s or even earlier. It fell out of vogue when new generations of potent pain pills came on the market; they were cheaper, worked faster, felt more modern.
But the opioid epidemic has soured many patients and doctors on the quick fix. And interest is again surging in a treatment method called biopsychosocial pain management, which trains patients to manage chronic pain with tools ranging from physical therapy to biofeedback to meditation. It helped Carl White, a 43-year-old social worker from Leroy, Minn.
The catch? It can take weeks and cost tens of thousands of dollars — and thus remains out of reach for most patients with chronic pain.
"We've been banging our heads on the wall, and banging our fists on the door, trying to get insurers to pay for this," said Dr. Bob Twillman, executive director for the Academy of Integrative Pain Management. "For the most part, they will not."
Chronic pain affects nearly 50 million Americans, according to the American Pain Foundation. The largest drivers include migraines, arthritis, and nerve damage — but in many cases, emotional trauma also contributes to the sense of misery.
"We have a lot of people in this country who are unhappy, isolated, and hurting," said Jeannie Sperry, a psychologist who co-chairs the division of addictions, transplant, and pain at Mayo Clinic. "Depression hurts. Anxiety hurts. It's rare for people to have chronic pain without one of these co-morbidities."
Indeed, chronic pain has a substantial psychological element: Being in pain often leads to self-imposed isolation. That loss of a social network then leads to anxiety, depression, and a tendency to catastrophize the pain — so that it's all a patient can think about.
More …
https://www.statnews.com/2017/05/30/chronic-pain-management/
NIH Releases Federal Pain Research Strategy Draft Research Priorities - American Society of Anesthesiologists
On May 25, the Interagency Pain Research Coordinating Committee (IPRCC) and the Office of Pain Policy of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) released draft Federal Pain Research Priorities, which were presented and discussed at a forum and public comment period on June 1. The forum immediately followed the Annual NIH Pain Consortium Symposium, where presentations highlighted multidisciplinary strategies for the management of pain. Following the open public comment period, written comments will be accepted until June 6.
The Federal Pain Research Strategy (FPRS) is an effort to oversee development of a long-term strategic plan for pain research. This is especially important, as most analgesics and anesthetics are used, despite known side effects and no new pharmacologic treatments for pain have emerged in recent years. The draft priorities acknowledge this and encompass this as one of the priorities, stating, "Given the adverse effects, risks of tolerance, dependence, and addiction, associated with opioids, new safer and more effective pharmacologic and non‐pharmacologic approaches for pain management are needed." ASA is pleased to see this as a focus, as chronic pain effects millions of Americans and the ongoing struggle to address the opioid epidemic persists.
The draft research priorities are a culmination of a diverse and balanced group of scientific experts, patient advocates, and federal representatives working together for nearly two years to identify and prioritize research recommendations. The process included a steering committee to report back to the broader IPRCC and five workgroups based around the continuum of pain: prevention of acute and chronic and pain; acute pain and acute pain management; transition from acute to chronic pain; chronic pain and chronic pain management; and disparities. The workgroups identified research priorities within their respective areas and together, in the areas where there was overlap, developed cross-cutting research priorities to incorporate their recommendations.
ASA members Steve Cohen, M.D. and David Clark, M.D. were part of the chronic pain and chronic pain management workgroup and were involved in developing research priorities to answer questions about the gaps in understanding around the mechanisms of chronic pain, effective treatments and self-management strategies.
The cross-cutting research priorities fall into these broader areas of research:
http://asahq.org/advocacy/fda-and-washington-alerts/washington-alerts/2017/06/nih-releases-federal-pain-research-strategy-draft-research-priorities
The Federal Pain Research Strategy (FPRS) is an effort to oversee development of a long-term strategic plan for pain research. This is especially important, as most analgesics and anesthetics are used, despite known side effects and no new pharmacologic treatments for pain have emerged in recent years. The draft priorities acknowledge this and encompass this as one of the priorities, stating, "Given the adverse effects, risks of tolerance, dependence, and addiction, associated with opioids, new safer and more effective pharmacologic and non‐pharmacologic approaches for pain management are needed." ASA is pleased to see this as a focus, as chronic pain effects millions of Americans and the ongoing struggle to address the opioid epidemic persists.
The draft research priorities are a culmination of a diverse and balanced group of scientific experts, patient advocates, and federal representatives working together for nearly two years to identify and prioritize research recommendations. The process included a steering committee to report back to the broader IPRCC and five workgroups based around the continuum of pain: prevention of acute and chronic and pain; acute pain and acute pain management; transition from acute to chronic pain; chronic pain and chronic pain management; and disparities. The workgroups identified research priorities within their respective areas and together, in the areas where there was overlap, developed cross-cutting research priorities to incorporate their recommendations.
ASA members Steve Cohen, M.D. and David Clark, M.D. were part of the chronic pain and chronic pain management workgroup and were involved in developing research priorities to answer questions about the gaps in understanding around the mechanisms of chronic pain, effective treatments and self-management strategies.
The cross-cutting research priorities fall into these broader areas of research:
• Novel drugs and non-pharmacological treatments for pain
• Screening tools and outcome measures for assessments across the continuum of pain
• National registries, datasets and research networks
• Effective models of care delivery for pain management
• Precision medicine methodology to prevent and treat pain
More ...
http://asahq.org/advocacy/fda-and-washington-alerts/washington-alerts/2017/06/nih-releases-federal-pain-research-strategy-draft-research-priorities
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