Opioids like morphine, oxycodone, and methadone that are used as painkillers may actually cause an increase in pain over time, suggests a study released on May 30.
Pain relievers are already deemed dangerous, because of the drug’s abuse, addiction, and fatal overdoses.
From 2001 to 2014 there was a 3.4-fold increase in the total number of deaths caused by opioid painkillers, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. An estimated 20,000 Americans died in 2015 from overdoses of prescription opioid pain relievers.
A new study by the University of Colorado Boulder found that opioids like morphine causes an increase in chronic pain. The use of lab rats in the study suggests that opioids could have a major impact in humans.
Researchers found that just a few days of morphine treatment caused chronic pain that went on for several months by aggravating the release of pain signals from specific immune cells in the spinal cord.
The study suggests that the recent increase in opioid prescriptions in humans may contribute to chronic pain.
“We are showing for the first time that even a brief exposure to opioids can have long-term negative effects on pain,” said one of the lead authors of the study, Professor Peter Grace.
