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Curr Pain Headache Rep · Mar 2021
ReviewDual Enkephalinase Inhibitors and Their Role in Chronic Pain Management.
- Warren A Southerland, Justin Gillis, Sumanth Kuppalli, Alex Fonseca, Andrew Mendelson, Storm V Horine, Nitin Bansal, and Amitabh Gulati.
- Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care, and Pain Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. wsouther@bidmc.harvard.edu.
- Curr Pain Headache Rep. 2021 Mar 24; 25 (5): 29.
Purpose Of ReviewDual enkephalinase inhibitors (DENKIs) are pain medications that indirectly activate opioid receptors and can be used as an alternative to traditional opioids. Understanding the physiology of enkephalins and their inhibitors and the pharmacology of these drugs will allow for proper clinical application for chronic pain patients in the future.Recent FindingsDENKIs can be used as an alternative mode of analgesia for patients suffering from chronic pain by preventing the degradation of endogenous opioid ligands. By inhibiting the two major enkephalin-degrading enzymes (neprilysin and aminopeptidase N), DENKIs can provide analgesia with less adverse effects than nonendogenous opioids. The purpose of this paper is to review the current literature investigating DENKIs and explore their contribution to chronic pain management.
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