New FDA Approval Could Transform Pain Management

Journavx is effective against acute pain, without the risk of addiction

Signage outside FDA office
A sign for the Food And Drug Administration is seen outside of the agency's headquarters.
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It’s become a familiar tragedy: someone is prescribed pain medication to recover from an injury, then becomes addicted to the medication intended to improve their life. It’s left both healthcare professionals and people recovering from surgery in a difficult position: should you take medication that will make your life more manageable if there’s a risk that it could make your life significantly worse?

That ethical dilemma may have a solution, based on an announcement from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration this week. The agency approved Journavx (suzetrigine) for use as a painkiller for acute pain in adults. What’s notable about this, as Gina Kolata explained at The New York Times, is that Journavx is non-addictive. As the FDA’s announcement pointed out, this drug works by addressing pain signals running through the body before they reach the brain.

Calling this approval “an important public health milestone in acute pain management,” the FDA’s acting director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, Dr. Jacqueline Corrigan-Curay, detailed what the implications could be. “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. Corrigan-Curay said.

In an article on the drug’s approval for Nature, Elie Dolgin explained how Journavx is similar to (and differs from) earlier pain medication that takes a similar approach to relieving pain. Novocain, Dolgin wrote, works in a similar manner but has a broader scope, meaning that applying them for treatment is a more specialized and precise process.

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It’s a change that was long in the making

The development of suzetrigine has been decades in the making, and this week’s FDA approval could lead to further refinement of sodium channel blockers. As Nature‘s reporting pointed out, approving Journavx won’t automatically make opioid painkillers obsolete. The FDA’s approval focuses on using it to treat acute pain, leaving the issue of safely treating chronic pain to be answered by other substances.

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