JOURNAVX, or suzetrigine, from Vertex. Photo:
Vertex Pharmaceuticals
A new painkiller has been approved for the first time in 25 years — and there’s no risk of addiction, experts say.
On Thursday, Jan. 30, The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that it has approved a new non-opioid painkiller pill from Vertex Pharmaceuticals called suzetrigine, which is being sold under the name Journavx.
And it works, according to one patient who took the drug during its trial period. Samantha, 50, took the then-unnamed painkiller following a rhinoplasty. “I didn’t have any pain,” she tells PEOPLE, adding that she felt coherent after her surgery. “I was sending emails, making calls … I was carrying on about my normal life immediately,” she says.
It was much different than how she felt on opioids after surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome: “I was loopy. I was nauseous — like, so nauseous. I would get dizzy,” she says. “I did not feel that way in the drug trial.”
She also didn’t experience the side effect of constipation that can accompany opioids, which she described as “just awful.”
FDA headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. Getty Images
The new drug is an alternative to opioids, which, even if used short-term, can lead to addiction and at times, overdose, according to the Mayo Clinic. In 2022, more than 81,000 people died from an opioid-related overdose — a drastic spike from 49,860 in 2019.
Whereas opioids block pain receptors in the brain, the FDA says Journavx works by “targeting a pain-signaling pathway involving sodium channels in the peripheral nervous system” before those pain signals reach the brain.
Of the 80 million Americans prescribed medicine to treat their acute pain annually, roughly half are prescribed an opioid, Vertex said in a statement. Nearly 10% of patients with acute pain with an opioid will “go on to have prolonged opioid use, and about 85,000 patients will develop opioid use disorder annually,” it adds.
“Options aside from opioids have been so desperately needed,” Dr. Jessica Oswald, Associate Physician in Emergency Medicine and Pain Medicine in San Diego and Vertex Acute Pain Steering Committee Member said in the statement. She added that since Journavx lacks “addictive potential,” it could could “redefine the management of pain.”
“Right now all the evidence suggests this has no addiction potential at all,” Dr. Richard Rosenquist, enterprise chairman in the department of pain management in the Neurological Institute at the Cleveland Clinic told NBC. “It’s no different than Tylenol or ibuprofen in terms of addiction potential.”
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