Now, millions more people will soon have access to this painkiller — a drug called suzetrigine that works by selectively blocking sodium channels on pain-sensing nerve cells and delivers opioid-level pain suppression without the risks of addiction, sedation or overdose. On Thursday, the US Food and Drug Administration approved suzetrigine for short-term pain management, making it the first pain drug given a regulatory nod in more than 20 years that works through a brand-new mechanism.
“This is a big step forward,” says Stephen Waxman, a neuroscientist at the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut.
“Anything we can add to the toolbox that will allow us to reduce opioid dependency is a significant positive,” says Paul White, an anaesthesiologist at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, who was involved in suzetrigine’s development.
Any move away from opiods is a great step for medicine. Not just in that they are addictive, but also that they do not work on a sub-set of the population.
I’m always slightly leary of channel blockers. But if it was just approved, that means it’s been going through trials and reviews for several years. I’m assuming that this has passed rigorous review for safety and efficacy, so I’m cautiously optimistic that this will be a great tool and not found to be a horrible drug five years down the road.
Most everything in the body is controlled by ion channels in cells. Channel blockers (sodium and calcium are the main ones) tend to have a narrow dose range and numerous side effects. If this novel drug really is selective, then the side effects may be reduced.
