Narcotic medications can safely and effectively ease severe, chronic pain in older people with little risk that these patients will seek ever-increasing doses, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) medical scientists have found. Younger patients, however, are likely to want to rapidly increase their medication dose, the researchers found, posing serious potential health consequences.
The study is the first to systematically compare younger versus older patients' desires/needs to escalate the dose of opioid pain medications they take -- a class of drugs including morphine, methadone and oxycodone (sold as OxyContin, Percocet among others). Based on the new findings, the researchers suggest that the drugs may be under-prescribed for older patients, yet pose unique risks for younger patients.
Opioids have long been used for unremitting pain caused by nerve damage, arthritis and other diseases, but clinicians and patients often worry that use of the drugs will lead to patient requests for ever-increasing doses. Extended opioid use at high doses can alter immune and hormonal function and, ironically, increase pain sensitivity. The escalating drug need, stemming from "tolerance" to a given dose, also can become very costly.
The new findings show that patients 60 or older faced a much lower risk of opioid "dose escalation" than did younger patients. Older patients also received long-term pain relief from the opioids whereas younger patients showed no long-term benefit.
The discovery about opioid tolerance and age was uncovered from a study of patient records, and confirmed in animal studies. The findings are being published in two papers in the June issue of Anesthesia and Analgesia.
"We have found that older patients, often discouraged from using opioids for pain management, actually gain significant long-term relief with minimal risk of excessive dose escalation or toxicity," said Pamela Palmer, MD, PhD, professor of anesthesia at UCSF and senior author of the two papers. Palmer is director of the UCSF Pain Management Center.
In addition, long-term use of opioids at moderate levels does not pose an increased risk for cardiac or kidney damage or gastric ulcers, as some Cox-2 inhibitors do -- a risk of greater concern for older patients than younger ones, Palmer said. Sedation and constipation are the main opioid side effects, but these can be managed by modifying the selection of the opioid, the dosage and proper bowel medications.
Researchers examined the medical records of 206 patients who had been treated for two years for severe, non-cancer-related pain, either from nerve damage (called neuropathic pain) or from arthritis, fibromyalgia and related conditions that cause what is known as nociceptive pain. Patients were divided into younger (less than 50 years old) and older (over 60) age groups.
The records showed that both groups started with similar doses of morphine-like drugs and both took about 14 to 15 months to reach their peak dose. But the average peak dose of the younger group was more than twice that of the older group. In many cases, peak doses for younger patients were well over half a gram per day of morphine or related opioid.
Younger patients with nociceptive pain escalated the drug dosage at a "tremendous rate" for more than a year, the researchers report. Yet they did not achieve any long-term pain relief from these high doses according to standard self-assessment scores. In contrast, the older patients, with less than half the dose escalation, reported significant relief from pain, the scientists found.
The researchers speculate that the difference between the older and younger patients may be the result of molecular changes in neurons that occur with aging, and they cite this as a particularly important area for future research. They also recognize the importance of a prospective study rather than a retrospective one, and they are planning a follow-up study.