hey everyone!
so this week i began retracing my steps and just overall tried to deviate from looking at a bunch of data sets and different medications types and everything of that sort, and instead focused on collecting new research that has come up regarding opioid therapy for chronic pain, and I’ve learned so much about it, so i decided to share it with you all in this post.
in a study conducted between October 2007 and March 2015, 53,124 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans struggling with chronic pain were not prescribed opioids in the previous year and were followed for one year after completing a Comprehensive TBI (traumatic brain injury) Evaluation (CTBIE) within Department of Veterans Affairs health care facilities, and the results turned up as follows:
– veterans reporting the most severe TBI sequelae (e.g., loss of consciousness > 30 minutes) were more likely to receive short-term and long-term opioid therapy than those with less severe or no TBI sequelae
– veterans with moderate to severe TBI plus comorbid PTSD and depression had an even greater risk of initiating long-term opioid therapy in the year following CTBIE
to put the aforementioned information and similar articles that i’ve read this week into perspective, essentially veterans with greater TBI severity and comorbid mental health were more likely to undergo opioid therapy.
in addition to those articles, i looked at studies relating to the chronic use of oxycodone as medication for chronic pain, so i thought i would share those results with you all as well. (i wanted to look into articles dealing with the other 3 medications i was focusing on as well, but i ended up spending too much time on oxycodone itself, so hopefully i can get that done next week!!)
– effect on central nervous system: deformation of axonal tracks, reduction in size of axonal fascicles, loss of myelin basic protein and accumulation of amyloid precursor protein beta (β-APP), pro-apoptotic machinery activated due to suppression of anti-apoptotic signaling in axonal tracks
– these are all the effects that have been detected so far and that I’ve compiled after scouring through 43 articles related to the use of oxycodone to treat chronic pain
after reading through all these articles. however, it’s come to my attention that i haven’t really specified/honed in on a specific region that the chronic pain targets; I’ve kind of meant for it to mean any type of chronic pain, so not only have i been able to read so many studies about opioid therapy use for chronic pain but I’ve also been able to find similarities in the effects of the various organs to opioids, so that was definitely an unexpected yet interesting fact.
in essence, this week kind of put me back on track as well as let me explored new avenues of research that i can look into a part from just the old data samples ive accumulated. next week, i’d like to compile all the effects that I’ve gathered from oxycodone and the other 3 medications I’m looking into and adjust those effects in my data sets and see how many different cohorts i can come up with then. after all, the more specific, the better because that will ensure that my clinical practical guideline proposal is more accurate and will actually be beneficial in saving lives.
until next time,
avani 🙂
Opioid Therapy 