The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved suzetrigine, the first drug in a new family of non-opioid painkillers to treat moderate-to-severe acute pain.
Suzetrigine, to be sold under the brand name Journavx, is the first new type of pain medicine approved by the FDA in more than two decades. It works by stopping nerve cells from sending pain signals to the brain.
Unlike oxycodone and other opioids, which can become addictive because they impact reward centers in the brain, suzetrigine is thought to be nonaddictive because it targets nerve cells outside the brain.
“A novel, effective pain medication that has no potential to induce overdose or addiction is a game-changer,” says Keith Humphreys, PhD, a psychiatry professor at Stanford University in California.