Published on
Updated
Reading 2 mins.
in collaboration with
Dr. Marc Lévêque (Neurosurgery – Pain)
According to a warning from the French Society of Pharmacology, the use of oxycodone has increased sharply in recent years in the country. However, this opiate is more addictogenic than morphine. A public health problem discussed with Dr. Marc Lévèque, neurosurgeon and pain specialist.
It is a painkiller that killed 600,000 people in the United States that worries France today. The use of oxycodone, a powerful painkiller that acts directly on the brain, has increased sharply in France in recent years, according to an alert from the French Society of Pharmacology and Therapeutics. And for no good reason, she says. “Its prescription in France follows a worrying progression while it does not present any pharmacological advantage compared to morphine”indicates the document.
A 738% increase since 2006
Thus, oxycodone could be “more addictive than morphine”, considers the SFPT. According to her, the treatments sold under the name of Oxycontin or OxyNorm, present more risks than morphine, without being more effective:
“Whether in terms of efficacy, adverse effect profile, pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic characteristics or risk of use disorder, there is no argument to prefer the first prescription of oxycodone over morphine”.
The consequences of its use are sadly illustrated: the involvement of this substance in toxic deaths by analgesics (DTA) quadrupled between 2013 and 2017. In 2019 in France, 23 involved oxycodone, according to the annual DTA survey. Figures far from the American ravages, of course, but which reflect a worrying evolution
“Addiction and the need to take more and more are problematic”
For Dr. Marc Lévêque, neurosurgeon and pain specialist, it is high time to talk more about this problem which he describes as public health, and to take measures to better treat the French.
“It’s a real subject, which responds to a societal demand: pain centers are now saturated and general practitioners find themselves helpless in the face of patients who are suffering. They do what they can by prescribing morphine , but it involves dangers, of which we must be aware”.
These are double, for the expert, who devotes a whole chapter to them in his latest book. Free us from pain.
“Oxycodone, like morphine, has two drawbacks: on the one hand, an addiction problem that we have known since the tragedy in the United States, (oxycodone has caused more deaths than Covid or the Vietnam.) On the other hand, the substance itself induces hyperalgesia, i.e. the more we take, the more we saturate our pain receptors and the more sensitive we eventually become to pain, which request to increase the doses”.
A vicious circle reinforced by the societal framework: “Oxycodone is also a subject of misery and social precariousness, because morphine is also part of the pharmacopoeia of distress: in patients, it helps to alleviate suffering other than physical.” recalls Dr. Lévêque.
However, as the SFPT writes, opiates are not indicated in neuropathic and unknown pain. To hope to reduce the doses and the risks on the population, it would therefore also be necessary to treat the ills of society, and not only pain.