Scientists at Stanford recently announced in the Journal of Pharmacogenetics and Genomics some promising findings: opioid withdrawal symptoms might be blocked by an already approved med:
Researchers found that a commonly used pain medicine also blocks the specific brain receptors that cause withdrawal symptoms for opioid addicts. The medication, called ondansetron or Zofran, is often used for chemotherapy patients suffering from nausea, is not addictive and has few side effects....
Addicts undergoing opioid withdrawal have symptoms including nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, insomnia and agitation. Currently, those symptoms are often treated with other opiates such as methadone and buprenorphine, "simply switching one opiate for another, so the patient is never fully detoxified," Chu said.
Another treatment uses the drug clonidine, which can cause severe drops in blood pressure and has to be closely supervised.
"Really we don't have any truly effective ways to treat opioid withdrawal in an outpatient setting," Chu said.
But the researchers got lucky, in a fashion:
Using genetic mapping, researchers determined there was one particular gene and brain receptor responsible for determining the severity of opioid withdrawal symptoms. They then had to find a drug to block that receptor.
"We were very lucky," Chu said. "It turned out such a medication already existed and had been approved by the FDA."
That enabled them to leap right into human trials, and so far, the results are promising enough to warrant further investigation.
Update: As Omgoleus points out, ondansetron is an antiemetic, not a pain med. Although the article got that wrong, I should have caught that, having taken a slew of ondansetron as part of a drug study at UW years ago...
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