Treating opioid use disorders during pregnancy: historical, current, and future directions.

The historical and current contexts of opioid use disorders during pregnancy are reviewed. There has been a long history of use of opioids by women in the United States, including by prescription prior to 1919. Neonatal abstinence syndrome was first identified coincident with this use. Methadone and more recently buprenorphine have proven to be successful pharmacotherapeutic agents in the treatment of opioid use disorder in pregnant women. However, these medications should be seen as only one ingredient of a comprehensive treatment approach for this population. The 21st century needs to witness a heightened emphasis on the myriad factors that lead to opioid use in women, and a broader education of those professionals who may come in contact with pregnant women with opioid use disorder.

Case histories in pharmaceutical risk management.

The development and implementation of programs in the U.S. to minimize risks and assess unintended consequences of new medications has been increasingly required by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) since the mid 1990s. This paper provides four case histories of risk management and post-marketing surveillance programs utilized recently to address problems associated with possible abuse, dependence and diversion. The pharmaceutical sponsors of each of these drugs were invited to present their programs and followed a similar template for their summaries that are included in this article. The drugs and presenting companies were OxyContin, an analgesic marketed by Purdue Pharma L.P., Daytrana and Vyvanse, ADHD medications marketed by Shire Pharmaceuticals, Xyrem for narcolepsy marketed by Jazz Pharmaceuticals, and Subutex and Suboxone for opioid dependence marketed by Reckitt Benckiser Pharmaceuticals Inc. These case histories and subsequent discussions provide invaluable real-world examples and illustrate both the promise of risk management programs in providing a path to market and/or for keeping on the market drugs with serious potential risks. They also illustrate the limitations of such programs in actually controlling unintended consequences, as well as the challenge of finding the right balance of reducing risks without posing undue barriers to patient access. These experiences are highly relevant as the FDA increasingly requires pharmaceutical sponsors to develop and implement the more formalized and enforceable versions of the risk management term Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies (REMS).

Buprenorphine for opioid dependence.

As a treatment agent for opioid dependence, buprenorphine is a nearly ideal medication at our current stage of medication development. Unlike methadone, buprenorphine dosage can be rapidly adjusted with minimal potential for inducing severe consequences. In addition to its intrinsic safety, buprenorphine's relatively low abuse liability in the combination product (i.e., with naloxone as Suboxone) makes it even more acceptable in regulatory quarters as well as to prescribing physicians. The approval of buprenorphine as a pharmacotherapy for opioid dependence returns to physicians the ability to treat their opioid-dependent patients with an effective opioid-based treatment for the first time in nearly 100 years. Buprenorphine is an opioid, however, and potential for misuse remains, even in combination with naloxone. Whether buprenorphine will be increasingly accepted as a treatment for opioid-dependent patients depends on clinicians recognizing the advantages of its uniquely useful properties while still heeding the need to manage their patients' therapy with reasonable vigilance.