The opioid addiction epidemic, which President Trump is about to declare to be a national health emergency, may be solved partly due to research now underway at a San Antonio medical research company, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
Dr. Richard Pollak, who is Principle Investigator at Endeavor Clinical Trials, says he is working with three separate drug manufacturers to test pain killers without the opioid base that leads to addiction.
Dr. Pollak says the vast majority of people who fall victim to opioid addiction do so because they are first prescribed opioid based painkillers legitimately by a physician to treat the pain from a medical procedure.
"We are doing three clinical trials right now for common surgical procedures for common surgical procedures that can evaluate and test new alternatives to opioid pain medications like Vicodin or Oxycodone and other opioids," Dr. Pollak told News Radio 1200 WOAI.
He says the rise of opioid addiction is prompting many physicians to be more careful about prescribing traditional pain meds, which is leaving patients in pain and without a remedy.
"We are working with a company that is using an anti-inflammatory, as well as a long acting novocaine-like substance," he said.
Dr. Pollak says his researchers are testing the promising painkillers on patients who have undergone three types of procedures for which opioid prescriptions are common...total knee replacement, hermia surgery, and bunyon removal.
He says if the tests show the drugs are successful and are without side effects, the results of his studies will go to the FDA, which will determine if the drugs can be prescribed for the purposes that physicians now prescribe opioids, providing the doctors with a non addictive alternative.