Suzetrigine, the new analgesic with which the US seeks to end the opioid crisis

In the United States they say that it is an epidemic and every year causes tens of thousands of deaths that could be avoidable.

Deaths due to overdose of opioid analgesics left in that country more than 80,000 deaths in the year of 2022, according to data from the centers for disease control and prevention (CDC).

One of the main causes behind this problem is that These medications are very effective in fighting pain, which makes them prescribed with relative frequency, although – at the same time – they have great potential to generate addiction.

A new medicine for the treatment of acute pains, newly approved by the Food and Medicines Administration (FDA) of the US, now promises to become an important tool in the fight against this opioid crisis.

The medicine, which has the name of Suzetrigine and will be marketed in the US as Journavx, was manufactured by VERTEX Pharmaceuticals and It is part of a new type of analgesics that modulate the pain signal on the site that is emitted, instead of doing so in the brain receptors, as do opioids.

This, experts say, would eliminate the risk of dependence and addiction that opioid consumption has, particularly in situations of acute pain such as surgeries or accidents.

“Today’s approval is an important milestone in the management of acute pain,” said Jacqueline Corrigan-Curay, the director in charge of the FDA Medicines Evaluation and Research Center, “a new class of non -opioid analgesic therapy offers the opportunity to mitigate certain risks associated with the use of an opioid for pain and offer another option to patients. “

The approval is the first in more than 20 years that is given to a new type of analgesic, something that shows the difficulties faced by researchers when treating pain.

A new mechanism

During the last 30 years, Dr. Stephen Waxman, from Yale University (USA) has been investigating the mechanisms that the body uses to express pain.

His studies focused mainly on the nerves of the peripheral system – those that communicate organs and limbs to the central nervous system and then the brain – and the chemical molecules that they use to communicate to the brain signs of pain.

“Opioids function as a key and a lock inside the brain,” preventing the arrival of those signals, Waxman explained to BBC Mundo.

“The sacred chalice of pain research was to find the molecules in our peripheral nerves and that we could block those signals.”

With his Yale team, Waxman experienced with different compounds that They will block a molecule known as NAV 1.8, a kind of battery that allows nerves to send pain signs to the brain.

When focusing on the emission of the signal, instead of reception in the brain, many of the side effects related to opioids are avoided.

“It does not touch the brain, so it does not have the side effects such as numbness, confusion, double vision or balance loss and has no addictive potential. So it really is a big step forward, ”says the expert, who does not work to VerTex but is a company consultant who are developing similar medicines.

Although the approval of the FDA was made for the treatment of acute pain, Waxman explained that it is still unknown if these types of medications can treat chronic pain or certain specific pains for which there are very few treatments.

The challenges of pain

Although the process for the approval of any medication, from its research stages to its departure to the market, can take between 15 and 20 years, Pain is a particularly difficult area to study.

“I think that the challenges associated with the development of a pain medication are greater than those that have the development of a vaccine, or a medicine for inflammatory diseases or for cancer,” says Waxman.

“You can measure those diseases, you can do a blood test and look for biomarkers -molecular evidence of the presence of some disease in the body -pain is a subjective response,” he adds.

The expert explains that measuring pain, through surveys in which the patient is asked to define the intensity on a scale of one to ten, can lead to irregular resultsgiven that other factors, such as sleep or anxiety, can increase the perception of pain.

That is why Waxman considers the new approval of Suzetrigin as a milestone that awaits the doors to new ways to combat pain.

“The work is in your childhood. We will not see its maturity but in 10 or 15 years, but I really believe that we will have personalized and individualized pain therapies, based on the genome, at some point of the next 10 or 15 years.”

The arrival of suzetrigine, and medications that may appear after approval in the US, can also be a mechanism to reduce the exposure of healthy people to opioids in medical situations.

This due to its immense addictive potential: according to data from the Massachussetts General Hospital, Between 9 and 13 percent of patients who use opioid analgesics after surgery end up generating chronic consumption.

It is an alarming figure, taking into account that only Between September 2023 and August 2024, the US reported almost 58,000 opioid overdose deathsdespite immense resources and programs to reduce the impact of this type of substances in the communities.

Within the policies of the Government of Donald Trump, the president has used the increase of tariffs as an instrument to press both China and Mexico and Canada to increase their efforts to prevent the entry of the synthetic opioid fentanilo to the USA.

But experts agree that new types of medications such as suzetrigine should be part of a long -term strategy to avoid the entry of healthy patients in a world that can hardly come out.

“The FDA has long supported the development of pain treatments without opioid,” said the agency in its statement.

“As part of the FDA Overdose Prevention Frame For the management of acute pain conditions, “he added.