I wonder if it damages kidneys. I got no room to damage kidneys and room to damage the liver so I had to switch from NSAIDs to acetaminophen.
As I am getting older I am getting more pain.
Cheers
Qazulight
Almost all drugs are eliminated from the body by your liver or kidneys, so I always jokingly say choose which organ you are going to harm today. Haven’t found anything specific on this new drug.
Found an interesting aside into the drug discovery,
"The medication was discovered after researchers learned about a family of fire walkers in Pakistan and discovered that they lacked a gene allowing pain signals to fire in their skin. "
My VRTX position is up 6% today.
8.7 Renal Impairment
JOURNAVX has not been studied in patients with renal impairment of eGFR < 15 mL/min. Avoid use of JOURNAVX in patients with renal impairment of eGFR < 15 mL/min [see Clinical Pharmacology (12.3)]. The recommended dosage in patients with eGFR > 15 mL/min is the same as those with normal kidney function.
Hi, @qazulight . Nice to see you again.
Age-related pain is different from pain caused by a specific structural problem (acute pain such as my open-heart surgery or chronic pain such as my sister’s severe scoliosis).
Age-related pain is caused by stiffening of the muscles and tendons because of years of sugars getting stuck to the surface of proteins. Advanced glycation end products (AGEs) cause that stiffness.
I find that movement is the best way to relieve the pain of AGEs. I do yoga stretches before I even get out of bed. I stretch while getting dressed. I stretch throughout the day. If I didn’t I would hurt all over, all the time. I also try to get 5,000 steps per day.
Wendy
It should be noted that the new drug has been approved for acute pain but not for chronic pain. The company said it is still working on chronic pain side.
DB2
The acute pain side is pretty well taken care of already. (Except for people who can’t tolerate opioids.) Surgeons use a mixture of analgesics because the pain system has different receptors.
The problem is chronic pain. Only opioids really control chronic pain and we are all aware of their problems. My sister uses TENS (transcutaneous electrical neural stimulation) for her severe scoliosis pain. Other friends have surgically-implanted neural stimulators. But people are still dying because they are denied prescription opioids and turn to illegal heroin in desperation.
Wendy
True enough, but the big difference is not with effectiveness but with addiction which has both personal and significant community effects.
Of the 80 million Americans prescribed medicine for moderate-to-severe acute pain annually, half are given an opioid, Vertex said in a press release. Ten percent of those will begin prolonged opioid use…
DB2
As someone for whom opiods simply don’t work, I am excited about this line of painkillers. I wonder if it impedes bone repair like Tylenol does. When Youngest was in the hospital with a compound fracture of the tibia, seeming to have inherited my lack of response to opiod pain killers, he begged for Tylenol. He would wake up screaming in pain 20 minutes after 1000 units IV dilaudid, only getting the pain tolerable when the doctor finally caved into the Tylenol. Spent a couple of extra days in the hospital due to the resistance to stop using the useless opiods. The suregeon explained that there was data showing that bone healing was delayed with Tylenol, and his admittedly did take longer than expected to heal. They still sent us home with a large, strong dose supply of Oxy, (along with the horse pills of Tylenol, )which Youngest never touched and wound up in a drug take back day at the police station. On the plus side, I definitely wasn’t worried about addiction for him.
IP
An eGFR of less than 15 is definition of renal failure, i.e., on dialysis. IF they are saying the dosage is the same for above 15 and normal (>90) then I would suspect limited kidney damage from the drug.
HOWEVER, after having worked one summer in the R&D department of a drug company, you never really know until the drug is released “into the wild”.
I’ve stopped taking nearly everything. No more advil, no more tylenol, if I feel sick, I take a nap. If I still feel bad, I take another nap. I also stopped taking my BP medication because it wasn’t doing anything measurable (I measure BP 2-3 times a day and record it, no difference between with medication and without medication). I generally only take medications prescribed by a doctor. So, when I had a kidney stone and ended up in the hospital for 3 days, they pumped dilaudid into me, and when I went home they gave me a prescription for tylenol+codeine, I took half a pill, and then a year later threw the rest away. I take a tylenol pill once every three or four years (for when I can’t take a nap LOL). No aspirin anymore. I took a sequence of antibiotics a few years ago before/after shoulder surgery, but I did not take ANY of the opioid painkillers they prescribed. And I took a sequence of steroids for something once in the last 10 years (prednisone maybe). Oh, and my dentist once insisted I take a dose of antibiotics before a deep cleaning, but nowadays I refuse to take antibiotics for that purpose anymore.
I don’t know if my pain is from bone spurs in my lower spine are just mis alignment on my lower back. I have been following a fairly aggressive weight lifting and metabolic training routine (Crossfit modified for old fat guys) That could be the problem as I have has sciatica for over a decade and getting that lower back out of alignment can be the problem. But spine mis alignment tends to cause bone spurs and I might have that going on. I will be working toward getting some imaging done as I haven’t looked around in that lower back in 15 years.
In the mean time my EGFR has dropped to as low as 42 after hanging out between 60 and 70 for 25 years (I think I damaged my kidneys when I was really sick with dysentery in India in the late 1980s) So now when I have pain, I
must choose to risk damaging my liver over taking a chance on damaging my kidneys.
So, a new drug that might not force a choice is of interest.
Cheers
Qazulight
Qaz,
Made me so happy to see you around again, but Aiiieee! (as we actually do “say” in Mexico) the health and pain issues. I hope you get it wired without sacrificing kidneys or liver.
I have been around, been watching. Just don’t have much to say.
Cheers
Qazulight
If this new class of drugs lives up to the promise of the manufacturer’s glowing accounts (and why would they exaggerate the potential???), it’ll be of significant benefit to folk who already are or have been addicts. Adequate pain management following surgery or serious injury is important to optimal recovery, and it can be a real dilemma when industrial strength pain meds are required.
My sister’s surgery to remove them was successful.
Wendy
They want to do a fusion on my wife’s c5 c6 and c7. The disks are bulging but not ruptured. We are thinking removing the sprs and trimming the disks would work better, but that doesn’t seem to be a main stream treatment.
Tell me more about your sister.
Cheers
Qazulight
Of course, every patient is different. My sister had bone spurs growing into the holes in L4 and L5 through which the leg nerves pass. Her legs were in intense pain and she was losing her ability to stand. The surgery consisted of removing the bone spurs. She recovered quickly and the pain went away.
This sounds relatively simple compared to your wife’s situation since disks were not involved. Before doing any surgery, especially “not a main stream treatment,” research carefully. Back surgery is tricky and mistakes can be permanently crippling.
Wendy