Key points
- Suzetrigine is a 50-milligram prescription pill that is taken every 12 hours
- It offers an opportunity to mitigate certain risks associated with using an opioid for pain
- Around 80m Americans fill prescriptions every year for medications to treat pain
- Suzetrigine works by preventing pain-signalling nerves around the body from firing in the first place
ISLAMABAD: The US Food and Drug Administration signed off Thursday on a new type of pain reliever to be approved in more than two decades.
The drug, suzetrigine, is a 50-milligram prescription pill that is taken every 12 hours after a larger starter dose, according to CNN.
Moreover, it will be sold under the brand name Journavx.
“A new non-opioid analgesic therapeutic class for acute pain offers an opportunity to mitigate certain risks associated with using an opioid for pain and provides patients with another treatment option,” Dr. Jacqueline Corrigan-Curay, acting director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in a news release.
“This action and the agency’s designations to expedite the drug’s development and review underscore FDA’s commitment to approving safe and effective alternatives to opioids for pain management.”
Pain prescriptions
Around 80 million Americans fill prescriptions every year for medications to treat new instances of pain, according to a study by Vertex Pharmaceuticals.
Many parts of the body are involved in the sensation of pain, explains Dr. Sergio Bergese, an anesthesiologist at Stony Brook University’s Renaissance School of Medicine.
Nerve cells carry an electrical signal from the place of tissue damage to the brain, which takes the signal as pain.
Unlike opioid medications, which stop the sensation of pain in the brain, suzetrigine functions by preventing pain-signalling nerves around the body from firing in the first place.
“This drug, what it is doing is interrupting that path, so even though the tissue injury exists, the brain doesn’t know,” Bergese said.
But importantly, suzetrigine creates no euphoria such as opioids sometimes can, so doctors believe there’s no potential for it to lead to addiction or dependence in people who use it.
Fire-walking Pakistani family
The medication was discovered after scholars came to know about a family of fire walkers in Pakistan and discovered that they lacked a gene allowing pain signals to fire in their skin. Members of this Pakistani family could walk over hot coals without flinching.

“They knew that they were on something hot; they knew they could feel the coals. So it’s not impacting the nerves that do heat and touch and stuff like that. It is just these pain-conducting nerves,” said Stuart Arbuckle, chief operating officer of Vertex Pharmaceuticals. “They were, in every other way, normal.”
However, it took scientists 25 years to find how to exploit that pain-conducting mechanism to develop a medication.
Transfer of pain
“Neurons talk to each other by producing series of nerve impulses, like a Morse code,” said Dr Stephen Waxman, who directs the Center for Neuroscience and Regeneration Research at the Yale School of Medicine. “And nerve impulses are produced by tiny molecular batteries within the membranes of neurons. The molecular batteries are called sodium channels.”
Suzetrigine works by closing one sodium channel that conducts only pain signals.
“There have been many false starts along the way to finding a drug that could block one specific sodium channel. Suzetrigine’s approval means other drugs that could work even better are likely to follow,” Waxman said.
“It is an important step forward because it provides proof of concept that a [sodium-channel blocker] can reduce pain in humans,” said Waxman, who has no financial ties to the new drug. “That opens up the door to a second generation of even more effective [medications].”
Suzetrigine is a pill that’s given in two dosages. In studies, participants got an initial dose of 100 milligrams, followed by 50 milligrams every 12 hours.