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Opiate-Induced Tolerance & Hyperalgesia in Pain Patients

CompletedPhase 4NCT00246532
View the official record on ClinicalTrials.gov

Recruiting status changes often. Contact the study team listed on ClinicalTrials.gov, and talk to your doctor before joining a study.

This study has no listed site in Canada in this snapshot. It is included as part of the worldwide chronic pain corpus.

Brief summary (from the registry)

Opiates such as morphine are the cornerstone medications for the treatment of moderate to severe pain. Recent evidence suggests that pain patients on chronic opioid therapy become more sensitive to pain (hyperalgesia) over time. There is also a long-standing notion that analgesic tolerance to opioids (habituation) develops during chronic use even though this phenomenon has never been prospectively studied. Our specific aims propose to prospectively test the hypotheses that; 1) Pain patients on chronic opioid therapy develop dose-dependent tolerance and/or hyperalgesia to these medications over time, 2) Opioid-induced tolerance and hyperalgesia develop differently with respect to various types of pain, 3) Opioid-induced hyperalgesia occurs independently of withdrawal phenomena, and 4) Opioid-induced tolerance and hyperalgesia develop differently based on gender and/or ethnicity. This proposed study will be the first quantitative and prospective study of tolerance and hyperalgesia in pain patients and will have important implications for the rational use of opioids in the treatment of chronic pain.

Study details

Official title
Opiate-Induced Tolerance & Hyperalgesia in Pain Patients
Conditions
Sponsor
National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS)
Start date
2005-10
Primary completion
2008-12
Sex
All
Age range
from 18 Years to 70 Years
Results posted
No results posted in this snapshot
Countries
United States
Total sites listed
1

Eligibility criteria

Show eligibility criteria (verbatim from the registry)
Inclusion Criteria: * opioid naïve (or less than 4 vicodin equiv/day) * 18-70 years old * candidate for opioid therapy for nonmalignant pain. Exclusion Criteria: * history of substance abuse or severe psychiatric disease * use of medications for the treatment of neuropathic pain as these may alter tolerance or hyperalgesia * neurological conditions interfering with experimental pain testing, e.g. severe peripheral neuropathy

Source: ClinicalTrials.gov (US National Library of Medicine), snapshot October 2026. Check the registry for current recruiting status. Record: https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT00246532