I had a conversation with my PM doc today about the new FDA approved drug by Vertex called Journavx or (suzetrigine). Here is what he told me this morning at my appointment.

I had my monthly appointment with my PM doc this morning. I brought up the new drug that has just been approved by the FDA and wanted to get his thoughts on it.

He said and I am quoting him pretty detailed here; The drug has only been approved by the FDA for acute pain only, as in post surgical pain and it is not used alone. It is used with a lower dose of an actual opioid. The idea is to give patients less opioids in these cases. He said that he is a bit skeptical because every time the pharmaceutical companies come out with a new drug, the whole thing is designed to hype up that drug and make huge profits, and generally the public and their doctors don't know what actual side effects are harms may happen until they start giving it to people by the millions. He gave the example of the new weight loss drugs that are diabetic drugs and how those drugs have caused serious harms and deaths in a certain number of people. He also pointed out the harms that happened when they first came out with Oxycontin, touting it as "non addictive" and "non harmful" only to find out years later how dangerous that drug was to patients. His feeling is, if and that is a big if, this drug gets approved for chronic pain patients, he is averse to just pulling his patients like me off our opioids, but he might lower our opioid dose on a trial period and add the drug as a 2 drug combo, to see if it does work effectively to help with chronic pain. If it does and his patients feel they don't need their regular dose of opioid pain medication and can lower it significantly without bad side effects, then he is all for continuing to do a 2 drug combo on it. He is glad that there is more interest in research for chronic pain patients, but he is cautious with big pharma in a lot of ways, because they are all about marketing a new drug, and not letting the general public know about the really bad effects or harms that their "new" drug might have on people. He said every pain patient is different. Gabapentin works great for some of his patients and with others it does not, because everybody's body is different.

So, there you have it. This was just one pain management doctor and his perspective on the new drug.