Opioids
Mitigating the Safety Risks of Drugs With a Focus on Opioids: Are Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies the Answer?
Approximately 40% of all newly approved drugs are subject to safety restrictions inclusive of Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies (REMS), which were created with the US Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act of 2007. This law expanded Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authority to require REMS of manufacturers but left implementation to the FDA. As a result, the potential access to medications that are effective but not without safety concerns has improved, yet the converse is also true because access may be restricted due to REMS requirements (eg, physician or patient registration).Strategies to Reduce the Tampering and Subsequent Abuse of Long-acting Opioids: Potential Risks and Benefits of Formulations With Physical or Pharmacologic Deterrents to Tampering
Increased prescribing of opioid analgesics for chronic noncancer pain may reflect acceptance that opioid benefits outweigh risks of adverse events for a broadening array of indications and patient populations; however, a parallel increase in the abuse, misuse, and diversion of prescription opioids has resulted. There is an urgent need to reduce opioid tampering and subsequent abuse without creating barriers to safe, effective analgesia. Similar to the “magic bullet” concept of antibiotic development (kill the bacteria without harming the patient), the idea behind reformulating opioid analgesics is to make them more difficult to tamper with and abuse by drug abusers but innocuous to the compliant patient.
