Journal of pain & palliative care pharmacotherapy
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On September 13, 2007, the United States Food and Drug Administration posted a safety alert for fentanyl buccal tablets (Fentora). The announcement and hyperlinks to the Dear Doctor and Dear Healthcare Professional Letters that were distributed by the sponsor are presented.
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The various institutes and offices of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) publish a range of public information articles on pain and its management. The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) updated its public information on chronic pain last august. That information is available to the public and clinicians will find it useful to learn what the information to which their patients have ready access via the World Wide Web. The most recent NINDS description of chronic pain is presented.
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Multiple same-day prescriptions for Schedule II medications offer the flexibility to provide continuous access to necessary medication without requiring that stabilized patients unnecessarily visit their prescriber on a monthly basis. The federal Drug Enforcement Administration recently promulgated a new regulation that specifically authorizes the use of multiple prescriptions. This is a change in policy within the agency. Health care professionals must communicate to each other that this useful practice is now recognized as being completely legal.
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J Pain Palliat Care Pharmacother · Jan 2008
Comparative StudyThe NIH Glucosamine/Chondroitin Arthritis Intervention Trial (GAIT).
Americans continue to spend millions of dollars annually on glucosamine and chondroitin for symptoms of osteoarthritis. These agents are classified as dietary supplements, not as drugs, per se. Therefore, they do not meet the requirements of the FDA to be classified as drugs. ⋯ For a subset of participants with moderate-to-severe pain, glucosamine combined with chondroitin sulfate provided statistically significant pain relief compared with placebo, about 79% had a 20% or greater reduction in pain versus about 54% for placebo. According to the researchers, because of the small size of this subgroup these findings should be considered preliminary and need to be confirmed in further studies. For participants in the mild pain subset, glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate together or alone did not provide statistically significant pain relief.
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J Pain Palliat Care Pharmacother · Jan 2008
Clinical TrialOpen-label, add-on study of tetrahydrocannabinol for chronic nonmalignant pain.
Cannabinoids have been used for pain relief for centuries and recent studies have investigated their analgesic and anti-inflammatory mechanisms, as well as clinical efficacy, in treating chronic pain. We report an open-label study addressed to evaluate the effect and adverse events of orally administered Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (Delta-9-THC) in 13 patients with chronic nonmalignant pain (CNMP) unresponsive to conventional pharmacotherapy. ⋯ Seven patients did not experience any adverse events (AEs), six patients reported AEs, two of which discontinued the treatment. We conclude that oral THC may be a valuable therapeutic option for selected patients with CNMP that are unresponsive to previous treatments, though further research is warranted to characterize those patients.