A BRC researcher has recruited the final patient into a ground-breaking international clinical trial of a possible new treatment for facial pain.
Professor Joanna Zakrzewska is an international expert on trigeminal neuralgia, a particular form of facial pain which results in unpredictable and excruciating shock-like attacks on one side of the face.
Currently drugs used to treat trigeminal neuralgia are primarily used to treat epilepsy. However patients on this trial will take new drug, CNV1014802, which is active against the Nav1.7 sodium channel – a key pain target.
Professor Zakrzewska, based at the Eastman Dental Institute, explained why this trial is the first of its kind: “The biggest problem with previous trials was that placebo drugs cannot be used as pain is so excruciating, and the active control interacts with too many other drugs”.
Within this trial placebos will be used, however Professor Zakrzewska predicts participants who have been administered placebos will opt out of the trial due to experiencing a great deal of pain. Therefore the quicker the placebo group patients drop out, the sooner the efficacy of CNV1014802 can be proved. The design of this trial, using placebos, encourages a number of participants to drop out early and avoids them experiencing undue pain.
Speaking about pain management, Professor Zakrzewska said surgery was a possibility in pain management but might be unnecessary: “We can carry out surgery – very often you find an artery pressing on the trigeminal nerve, just before it enters the brain. However, not everybody needs or wants surgery”.
Recruitment to the study ended in December 2013 with each patient now undergoing a secondary screen carried out by the data monitoring group led by Professor Zakrzewska.
Professor Zakrzewska is lead author of ‘Novel design for a phase IIa placebo-controlled, double-blind randomized withdrawal study to evaluate the safety and efficacy of CNV1014802 in patients with trigeminal neuralgia’ published in Trials. Click here to read in full.
