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The Future of Pain Pharmacotherapy

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Treatment of Chronic Pain by Medical Approaches

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Abstract

According to the American Academy of Pain Medicine and the Institute of Medicine, pain affects more Americans than cancer, diabetes, and cardiac disease combined. Current analgesics only provide modest relief, frequently carry black box warnings, and are susceptible to abuse. The ability of current medical science to treat pain effectively is limited by an incomplete understanding of the mechanisms of pain signaling in diverse individuals across different circumstances and the high prevalence of side effects after systemic or regional administration of available analgesics. Despite increasing interest in developing new analgesic molecules by translating preclinical research on mechanisms of pain processing and harnessing innovative methods of drug delivery, the majority of new analgesic drug launches from 1990 to 2010 were reformulations of existing pharmaceuticals within well-established drug categories such as opioids and NSAIDs.

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Acknowledgment

Partial support for this work was provided by the Saltonstall Fund for Pain Research.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anesthesiology, Tufts Medical Center and Tufts University School of Medicine, 800 Washington Street, #298, Boston, MA, 02111, USA

    Iwona Bonney Ph.D.

  2. Department of Public Health, Anesthesiology, Medicine, and Molecular Physiology and Pharmacology, Tufts University School of Medicine, 136 Harrison Avenue, Boston, MA, 02111, USA

    Daniel B. Carr M.D., DABPM, FFPMANZCA (Hon)

Authors
  1. Iwona Bonney Ph.D.
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  2. Daniel B. Carr M.D., DABPM, FFPMANZCA (Hon)
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Iwona Bonney Ph.D. .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. President and CEO, Clinical Professor of Anesthesiology, The Center for Pain Relief, West Virginia University School of Medicine, Charleston, West Virginia, USA

    Timothy R. Deer

  2. Clinic Chief, Clinical Associate Professor, Department of Anesthesiology, Stanford Pain Medicine Center, Redwood City, CA, USA, and Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, USA

    Michael S. Leong

  3. Department of Anesthesiology, Pennsylvania State University, College of Medicine, Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Hershey, Pennsylvania, USA

    Vitaly Gordin

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© 2015 American Academy of Pain Medicine

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Bonney, I., Carr, D.B. (2015). The Future of Pain Pharmacotherapy. In: Deer, T., Leong, M., Gordin, V. (eds) Treatment of Chronic Pain by Medical Approaches. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-1818-8_19

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-1818-8_19

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4939-1817-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4939-1818-8

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