Patients suffering from pain have limited options when it comes to medication. For decades, the only two choices have been over-the-counter medicines like Tylenol or powerful prescription opioids.
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    WASHINGTON (AP) — For decades, patients seeking medication for pain have had two choices: over-the-counter drugs like aspirin or powerful prescription opioids like oxycodone.

    Opioid prescriptions have plummeted over the last decade as doctors have become more attuned to the risks of addiction and misuse during the country’s ongoing drug epidemic.

    Vertex Pharmaceuticals recently reported positive results for a non-opioid painkiller, one of several medications the Boston-based drugmaker has been developing for various forms of pain.

    Identifying additional medicines that could be used for people who need more pain relief but don’t want to take the risks of opioids would be helpful for society.

    Vertex has been working on this for 20 years, and the insight that led to the medicines actually came from studies of people who had a rare condition where they are insensitive to pain.

    Addictive medicines typically work in the brain and they have side effects that aren’t really separable from the reduction in pain, because they’re the same thing.

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