The Trump administration is encouraging drug companies to develop medicines that people with opioid addictions would need to take only every few months so they can more easily combat withdrawal cravings without relapsing.
The planned incentives from government medical research agencies are part of a broader strategy aimed at reducing deaths from drug overdoses such as heroin, prescription painkillers, and fentanyl, which resulted in more than 42,000 deaths in 2016.
Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, said the agencies are interested because they have noticed that half of patients with opioid addictions relapse within six months after treatment stops.
“This identifies the need of developing medications that can improve compliance of patients with their treatment regimes,” Volkow said.
When patients face a gap in their treatment, such as missing a dose, they are more likely to seek an opioid and possibly die from an overdose. Researchers hope that giving people medication that can last for a longer period will get them past the point where they are likely to relapse and will allow more people to be in recovery.
The government recently approved one opioid treatment that people can take every six months, which gets them past that initial period where they tend to have difficulty.
Health officials detailed their efforts at combating the opioid epidemic in a conversation with reporters Tuesday at the Department of Health and Human Services. The remarks come after President Trump announced his opioid strategy Monday, saying that the approaches would encompass prevention and treatment, which health agencies will tackle, and cutting off illicit supplies of opioids, which will fall mostly on law enforcement officials.
“He really cares very deeply about this opioid crisis,” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said of Trump.
Azar and other officials laid out the proposals from the administration, which include other research areas such as developing more medicines for people who overdose and pain treatments that aren’t addictive.
“Clearly that is a dilemma that a lot of people with chronic pain face, that there aren’t a lot of options,” said Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health.
Collins said at least 33 pharmaceutical entities had met with NIH to discuss the proposals, which they had greeted with “wide enthusiasm.” Health agencies are in flux at the moment, however, because they are waiting on Congress to pass a long-term spending bill to determine how much they can spend on opioid-related efforts, among other initiatives. Congress faces a Friday deadline to avoid a partial government shutdown.
“It is now a matter of figuring out exactly how we would put the funding and the governance together,” Collins said of the work at the NIH. “And you may know from the government’s perspective, this is an interesting week to figure out exactly what kinds of resources we might have for that. So, stay tuned.”
Other approaches to the opioid crisis will include carrying out a multimedia campaign to educate the public about opioid abuse and reducing the overprescribing of legal opioids, such as OxyContin and Percocet, by one-third in three years. HHS is also encouraging states to make changes to their Medicaid programs so that more facilities can be reimbursed for providing treatment to people with addictions.
