Below is an e-mail that I changed just enough to hide the person’s identity.  Every week, I receive messages that describe similar situations.

My husband has struggled GREATLY with substance abuse since in his 20′s; he is now in his mid-40′s. He is the kindest sweetest man and he is the BEST husband and father. When he is using he becomes someone he is not. We have run the gamut from jail to overdose.  Six years ago a friend introduced him to Suboxone and it LITERALLY gave him his life back. He bought it off the friend for years, where it was very expensive. Finally I brought him to a doctor a bit over a year ago. She is pretty adamant about weaning him off of Suboxone.

From experience, I know that 2-3 months after he stops Suboxone he will relapse. I strongly believe it IS a MIRACLE drug! I agree in the sense that if a diabetic needs insulin to save his life, you give it for a lifetime. My husband over the last 6 years has been the man of my dreams, the man I always knew he was. I have extreme anxiety because I know this doctor is just doing her job and trying to follow guidelines however my husband’s LIFE is at stake!  It’s not like if he stops this med he could ‘just’ have depression;  he could end up in jail, or worse. He has his life back. He is enjoying his family life as he should.

If this is what it takes for him to live a normal life then why not?  When we ask his doctor about staying on Suboxone, she says her concern is that we don’t know the long-term effects. She doesn’t want to keep anyone on any med without knowing what it could do. She says it hasn’t been on the market long enough. 

My husband had a SEVERE opioid addiction. He was taking 10-15 Oxycontin 80mgs a day and then ended up switching to 400mgs of methadone before he switched to Suboxone. He has found that he is comfortable with 4 of the 8mg pills per day. I believe it is because he was used to taking such high doses of opioids. He has tried really hard to decrease Suboxone for his doctor but I see the anxiety build in him. She says no one in her practice is on that dose. To be honest he was taking more when he was buying them from a friend but brought himself to a stable 4 pills per day when he started with the doctor. He and I both REALLY like her and would like to continue treatment with her. I wish I had a DVD of little clips of our life from before and after Suboxone. I am positive she would be floored. I am positive she would understand my concern. In my eyes my husband is back. He is such a beautiful soul and I hate to see that taken away from him yet again.

Doctor I read up at the top of this blog that you agree with a lifetime use. He currently has no noted side effects. Do you have any suggestions that I may present to his doctor? I dream of the day that she says it is alright for him to continue on this until maybe he chooses to wean if he so chooses to do so. That would alleviate SO MUCH stress on both of us. Please let me know what you think.

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I agree with most of the opinions expressed in the email.  I know how horrible things are for active opioid addicts—and for the families of active opioid addicts.
More and more physicians pay lip service to ‘addiction as a disease,’ but most do not yet treat addiction as a disease.  The comments about diabetes are ‘right on.’ One could substitute a number of diseases to demonstrate the same point.  We physicians have few illnesses that we cure; rather we manage illness over a person’s lifetime— and opioid dependence is clearly a life-long illness.

To address a couple points in the message:  the active ingredient in Suboxone, buprenorphine, has been in clinical use for over three decades, and has established a clean safety profile.  Buprenorphine has not been used at the high doses employed for treating opioid dependence for quite as long, but even that track record is significant, i.e. 8 years in this country, and longer in Europe.  Most physicians would not consider an 8-yr-old medication to be a ‘new drug!’

The situation described in the message is, in my opinion, the result of several factors.   First and foremost, the reluctance to prescribe buprenorphine is a consequence of stigma.  Doctors prescribe new antidepressants, pain relievers, blood pressure treatments, and cholesterol-lowering agents with much less concern over ‘safety.’     I wonder, frankly, if safety is the concern—or whether there is an unconscious sense that patients addicted to opioids, or to other substances, don’t deserve an ‘easy way out’ of their problem; that sitting through a miserable detox is  a more fitting ‘treatment’ than a pill that makes things better.

I come to this cynical conclusion only because the alternative—that buprenorphine is ‘dangerous’—doesn’t make sense.  The risk of any medication must be compared against the risk of not using that medication.  As the message states, we know the risk of ‘not treating’ the woman’s husband!  Similar comparisons are used to justify the use of chemotherapeutic agents that have severe toxic effects, including the risk of killing the patient.  As I’ve written in prior posts, the fatality rate from untreated opioid dependence is as high as for many cancers.  So does it make any sense to withhold buprenorphine out of safety concerns?!

There are other reasons for doctors’ reluctance to prescribe buprenorphine. Many fear they will do something wrong, and run afoul of the DEA during an audit—a process that all buprenorphine-certified prescribers are subject to.   Some doctors feel pressure from friends and family members of patients, who often blame the doctor for keeping the patient ‘stuck on Suboxone.’  Some doctors want to maintain high patient turnover in order to keep money  coming in, since practices are ‘capped’ at 100 patients per certified physician.

Finally, I think many doctors see ongoing treatment as less satisfying than a ‘cure.’  They consider residential treatment the gold standard, and buprenorphine as a less-intensive alternative.  They buy into the idea that the addict can be returned to ‘normal’—whatever that is—if he/she works at recovery hard enough.  I understand the thought, as that is the type of treatment experience that I went through.  But on the other hand, the relapse rate for opioid dependence, after residential treatment, is very high. I myself relapsed after seven years of recovery, losing my career, and almost my life.  During my years as medical director of a large residential treatment center, patients discharged as ‘successfully treated’ often became repeat customers, at least until they lost their job and health insurance.  Some of them– too many of them–died.

I won’t get into the specifics of treatment;  I’ll leave that to her husband’s doctor to work out.  But I do hope that the doctor will give some thought to whether stopping this life-saving treatment is truly in the patient’s best interest.

To the patient’s wife– I encourage you to continue as an advocate, and I hope your doctor will understand your perspective.

I was stunned to see this story about the town of Brattleboro, a town in Vermont with a name famous for the rats that grew up there.

As an aside, my PhD thesis involved working with vasopressin receptors in the brain, and that is why I’m familiar with Brattleboro rats– a species of rat that spontaneously mutated and lost the ability to make vasopressin.

One would think that inhabitants of a town made famous over a rat would be on their best behavior.  But they behaved worse than their namesakes at a meeting intended to get the OK for a clinic to treat people using Suboxone.  I’ll let you read the article, while I get back to what I was doing when I stumbled across the article.  What a bunch of…

Ah, forget it.

A recent experience with a patient helped me realize some of the dramatic differences in the treatment of opioid dependence, in an era of buprenorphine.

I drug-test patients who are treated with buprenorphine or Suboxone.  The point of testing is not to catch someone messing up, but rather to determine when a person is in trouble.  It would be great if we could simply rely on the word of our patients, but once a person is using opioids, his/her own ability to know what is true falls apart. All of us who treat addiction have heard patients rationalize relapse as something they ‘had to do’ for one reason or another, for example.  The effects of active using on insight are why I like the use of ‘DENIAL’ as a mnemonic for ‘Don’t Even Notice I Am Lying.’

The effects of relapse on telling the truth are part of the profound impact of using on a person’s insight.  Insight disappears very quickly during active using, as the mind abandons the broad view and becomes focused on one goal. Before buprenorphine, drug testing was in some ways more, and other ways less important.  It was more important because after relapse, the person was immediately thrown back into the world of desperate scrambling, where risks for consequences are high.  On the other hand, testing was less important—or maybe necessary– because experienced addictionologists (and spouses) could see the effects of using, including the loss of insight, in the active addict’s eyes.

I was one of those people who experienced that rapid loss of insight after my relapse, back in 2000. For years I had attended AA and NA; hundreds if not thousands of meetings over seven years.  I remember comforting myself that ‘if I ever get off track, at least I now know where the door is to get back.’  I didn’t realize that at the instant one relapses, that door becomes nowhere to be found.

In retrospect, I don’t know if the door actually disappeared. I suspect that with the right attitude, that same door would have opened for me.  But the honesty and humility that I needed, in order to ask for help in finding and passing through the door, were suddenly replaced by the need for secrets—secrets about everything.  As soon as I relapsed, nobody could be trusted. Nobody would understand me.  I was on my own.

Contrast that with the experiences of patients on buprenorphine who relapse with opioid agonists. As I compare their experiences to mine, I realize that I am using the experiences of a couple people to make broad generalizations.  But I have seen a number of examples that support these generalizations, that have consistently followed the paths that I’m about to describe.

One patient—call him ‘Paul’—told me about his relapse before I even mentioned that I would be asking for a urine test.  In fact, he was eager to tell me about his experience, as if he looked forward to getting it off his conscience.  “I have to tell you that I really screwed up last week,” he said. When I asked him what happened, he said that a friend who he hadn’t seen for several months came through town and stopped by his house.  With little warning, his friend pulled out a bag of heroin and a couple clean needles, tossed them on the table, and said ‘let’s fire up.’

After shooting the heroin, Paul immediately felt disappointed in himself.  Unlike in the old days, he felt nothing from the heroin.  While his old friend nodded off next to him, Paul wondered what the heck happened—and immediately wanted to talk to me about the situation.

His desire to talk is an amazing thing—and worth noting.  Without buprenorphine, a person who relapses is not generally eager to speak to his/her sponsor, let alone counselor or physician.  In those cases, the mind reels from an avalanche of shame, and the need to keep secrets—even from one’s own awareness—becomes paramount.

There are many buprenorphine programs that would discharge a person for one relapse—and in such cases, I would not expect the same type of honesty from patients.  I don’t get the logic of those programs, and I become angry when I think about them.  As I’ve said before, if a person relapses, that person NEEDS help—not abandonment!  I believe that the proper approach to treating addiction can be found in almost all cases simply by considering opioid dependence to be another chronic illness.  And if someone with heart disease overexerts himself and comes in with chest pain, we don’t boot him from treatment!

Paul made an appointment to talk about his experience.  He explained how he felt when his old buddy contacted him, and we discussed ways to avoid meeting up with ‘old friends’ in the future.  He discussed the urge to escape when he saw the paraphernalia—to escape from life’s responsibilities—and we talked about how difficult it can be to simply tolerate life sometimes, and the powerful effects of triggers and cues.  Most interesting to me, as a psychodynamic psychiatrist, he talked about a complicated set of thoughts and feelings that came up when he saw the drugs—questions about who he was, about shame, about the heavy load that comes with doing the right thing, and about the pressure of not letting people down.  Those are all big issues, I said as I agreed with him.  How much easier, at least for a few moments, to just be ‘nothing’—to have no expectations about one’s self!

We talked about the challenge of being ‘someone’– of being proud of one’s self.  It feels good to do the right thing– but it may also feel bad.  Am I letting my old friends down, if I do better? I suggested that he might watch the old movie, Ordinary People, where a younger brother struggles after surviving an accident that claimed the life of his brother.

Before buprenorphine, people struggled with opioid dependence largely on their own.  Yes, we had twelve step groups—and still do—but twelve step groups place the responsibility to get one’s act together squarely on the back of the using addict.  Many people in AA or NA will say that “AA is a selfish program.”  It has to be.  When one relapses, one is left with his own distorted insight, accumulating consequences until, hopefully, he finds his way back to the pathway established by the simple program of the steps.

On buprenorphine, relapse doesn’t necessarily cause instant loss of insight.  I don’t mean to minimize relapse, as bad things can always happen.  For example, I have had patients stuck in a pattern of chronic relapse that was difficult to straighten out, even though there was little or no psychic effect from the drug being abused.  But from an optimistic standpoint, relapse on buprenorphine stimulates a deeper investigation into what is missing from the person’s life, and a renewed effort to gain what is missing.

This assumes, of course, that the person is not simply tossed from treatment for the relapse.  In that case, other people are left trying to figure out what happened—when the obituary appears a few months later.

There are ongoing efforts to eliminate the cap on treating people for opioid dependence with buprenorphine or Suboxone.  I don’t know what the odds of success are, but the efforts would benefit from public demand.  If you have had difficulty finding a doctor with room under the cap, write a letter or email that explains just how important the issue is to you, and send it to the address(es) below.

The change requires an Act of Congress, or perhaps an executive order from someone high-placed in the Dept of Health and Human Services.  Consider sending a ‘cc’ to your elected representatives in the Senate or House of Representatives.  I am not excited about using NAABT.org, since they tend to be patsies for Reckitt-Benckiser (I’ve asked to have a link to this blog, or to our 6000-member forum on their web page, but they won’t– but they link to an R-B – supported forum instead– draw your own conclusions).  But this issue is too important even for my own righteous anger to get in the way!

Send comments to the following e-mail or mailing address:

NAABT, Inc.
P.O. Box 333
Farmington, CT 06034

Email address:
MakeContact@naabt.org

A Reader Writes:

Message:

The State of XXXXXX prescription price list noted Target Pharmacy as the cheapest for Suboxone at $6.99/Suboxone pill, 8mg-2mg, qty. 30. So I started getting my prescriptions filled at Target.

Well, needless to say they raised their prices twice since then and I am now paying $8.158333/Suboxone pill, 8mg-2mg, qty. 30, Nov. 12, 2011.

My question: How can they be alowed to jack their prices up so fast and so high in a short period of time? What can I do? It’s like they pulled a bait and switch on me.

Please write back Dr. Junig

My Reply:

I sympathize with you.  The best thing you can do is have an educated and educatable doctor– someone who has enough humility to recognize when he/she is wrong, and adjust accordingly.  Somebody who recognizes that as physicians, we are constantly sorting through new data, responding clinically to phenomena according to science.  Most importantly, someone who recognizes that in medicine, as in all fields, people make assumptions about things with partial data, and sometimes later learn that their assumptions were wrong.

I realize that is difficult in the current era when people with addictions are considered ‘manipulative’ for simply raising appropriate questions.  The truth is also competing with the marketing and persuasion tactics by Reckitt-Benckiser– a company that has found a way to influence policy-makers in government and addiction societies.  I am generally a fan of corporate greed, as I believe that the marketplace is the best stage for ideas to rise or fall (mixing several metaphors, I know!)  But I am appalled by the extent of involvement of Reckitt-Benckiser, the British corporation that makes Suboxone, with physician societies– the groups that are supposed to be advocating for policies that save lives that are being lost to addiction.

The generic tablet of orally-dissolving  buprenorphine, 8 mg, is FDA-indicated for treating opioid dependence.  In Wisconsin, some pharmacies have it for as
low as $2.35 per tab;  the more expensive places sell it for $3.00.  It is CLINICALLY IDENTICAL to Suboxone;  the naloxone in Suboxone is not absorbed sublingually (actually, 3%-5% is absorbed, but does nothing clinically), and after being swallowed the naloxone is completely destroyed at the liver by first pass metabolism.

Suboxone is supposedly safer then generic buprenorphine because naloxone supposedly causes withdrawal if injected.  This is the only justification (initially put forth by the folks at Reckitt-Benckiser) for the need for Suboxone.  The justification is flimsy, since many people who would benefit from the lower price of buprenorphine have very little risk of injecting the medication.  But worse, the flimsy justification is a lie. People who have injected Suboxone intravenously (I have met and heard from many of them) report NO withdrawal from naloxone-containing Suboxone.  What’s more, people who wrote to me who have injected both buprenorphine and Suboxone, at different times based based on availability, have all reported the same thing– that the subjective experience from injecting either substance is identical.

I must point out here that there are MANY reasons to avoid injecting any substance– but particularly a substance made to be taken orally.  These compounds contain fillers that destroy the capillary beds of the lungs, where oxygen is absorbed– potentially leading to severe lung damage.  And infection is always a huge risk, when placing poorly-sterilized material directly into the bloodstream.  Please– don’t do it.

Back to taking buprenorphine properly… the high cost of Suboxone is an unfair burden for patients without insurance coverage, when a much cheaper, idential alternative is available.

I am going to remove your name and location, and put up your question on my blog;  you are then welcome to bring a copy of the post to your doctor. You can also tell him/her to read prior posts, where I explain all of this in greater detail.

For Doctors and Insurance Formulary Committees:

I implore you to look into the facts of this situation with an open mind.  I have a PhD in Neurochem, besides 10 years of experience as an anesthesiologist and training and experience in psychiatry.  Some insurers cover buprenorphine;  they are, of course, the smart ones.  Your company can save a great deal of money by simply allowing the generic equivalent to be covered.  States that mandate the use of Suboxone or Suboxone Film could save large sums of money for their taxpayers.  And doctors–  your cash-paying customers could really use the break, especially in this economy.  If you are concerned that a patient is injecting medication, I understand your hesitancy— even though, frankly, it is misplaced, given that BOTH Suboxone and buprenorphine can be injected.  If your patient pays cash, and never injected medication, do you REALLY think that person is going to start injecting buprenorphine– since doing so would not create any effects?  The ‘ceiling effect’ is in place for ANY route of administration, so a patient taking sublingual Suboxone, who injects buprenorphine, will feel… NOTHING.

Give your patient the gift of affordable treatment as a Christmas present.  You may be saving someone’s life.

JJ

As I give my last post more thought….  I wonder if there is ANY clinical difference between $uboxone at $7 per dose, vs. generic buprenorphine at $2.33 per dose?  Researchers out there– can anyone send me a reference?

Read my last post for details– but the essence is that naloxone is destroyed when Suboxone is taken properly (orally, sublingually), and has no action whatsoever– on that issue there is scientifc agreement (although there is a great deal of ignorance among prescribers about this fact).  The ONLY think naloxone does, is to supposedly serve as a deterrent to IV injection of buprenorphine.

Sounds good, but…  we know that people divert Suboxone intravenously, naloxone and all.  Buprenorphine binds opioid receptors very tightly- so tightly that the naloxone doesn’t effectively compete with buprenorphine.

The State of WI requires Medicaid patients to take expensive Suboxone Film, whereas in other cases they require prescribing the generic.  What is the argument for requiring the film?  RB would argue (now that the tablet has lost the luster of being on-patent) that the film is harder to ‘divert’– i.e. to inject.  But frankly, the intravenous diversion of buprenorphine is a tiny issue compared to things like heroin addiction and a budget crisis.  Most of the diversion of buprenorphine, either Suboxone or generic, is not injected, but rather taken orally to ward off withdrawal– and the film makes no difference in that case.

Insurers, likewise, are wasting millions of dollars (literally) by paying for Suboxone— sometimes exclusively(!)  Have the bean counters fallen asleep on this issue?

I have nothing personal against Reckitt-Benckiser, beyond the fact that they refuse to engage in conversation with me.  If the good Brits at RB have discovered a way to suck millions of dollars from the weakest members of society, more power to them.  But I am a big fan of intellectual honesty, particularly in regard to the science behind medical practice.  So if someone has evidence that $uboxone is clinically different than generic buprenorphine, whether used properly or injected, please send it my way.

This post is from a couple years ago;  I think it is important for people to have a basic understanding of how buprenorphine removes opioid cravings, so I’m republishing the post.

Note that naloxone has NOTHING to do with the effects of Suboxone.

In this video I explain why the ceiling effect is so important to the effects of buprenorphine for treating opiate dependence.

I have shared my thoughts about ‘Suboxone Film,’ a product that serves only one purpose:  to block generic competition from entering the Suboxone market.  Below I’ve copied a Bloomberg article that discusses the current nature of the buprenorphine/naloxone business, and the efforts by RB to prevent market penetration by generics– something that would lead to price reductions for healthcare consumers.

Unfortunately, the Bloomberg article overlooks the most significant threat to the profits of Reckitt-Benckiser.  This threat is mitigated only by the ignorance of many of the physicians who prescribe Suboxone.  The threat to profits consists of a simple fact that RB does not want anyone to realize:  that the generic equivalent of Suboxone is already available, in the form of orally-dissolving tablets of buprenorphine.

I encourage physicians who doubt my comments to do their own ‘due diligence’ and break out their old pharmacology textbooks.  I have a hard time understanding how people who graduated from accredited medical schools can get things as wrong as they do with this issue.  I sometimes present opinions, but not with this post.  The facts about buprenorphine and naloxone that I’m about to describe are described in any pharmacology textbook— e.g. Goodman and Gilman—and are not in dispute in any way.

Suboxone consists of buprenorphine plus naloxone.  Naloxone is an opioid antagonist that is added to reduce diversion of Suboxone in the form of intravenous injection of a dissolved tablet.  Naloxone is NOT ACTIVE when not injected.  The molecule is poorly absorbed through the oral mucosa because of the molecule’s size and poor lipid-solubility.  Instead, naloxone is swallowed, absorbed from the small intestine, and totally destroyed at the liver before reaching the systemic circulation through a process called ‘first pass metabolism.’

I suspect that some physicians confuse naloxone with the similarly-named substance naltrexone, an opioid antagonist (blocker) that IS orally active. There is NO naltrexone in Suboxone.

All of the beneficial aspects of Suboxone come from the partial agonist buprenorphine.  The ceiling effect of buprenorphine causes a reduction in cravings through a process that I’ve described in earlier posts.  Naloxone, on the other hand, does absolutely nothing to reduce cravings, to increase safety, to reduce euphoria, etc, provided that the medication is not injected.

The confusion surrounding buprenorphine essentially consists of intellectual laziness or intellectual dishonesty by the physicians who prescribe the medication and the pharmacists who dispense it.  I realize that not all doctors are cut out to be ‘physician scientists’ who understand pharmacology in great detail.  But I am particularly disappointed that the large organizations that supposedly oversee the science of addiction treatment have dropped the ball on this issue. I don’t know why groups like ASAM and SAMHSA don’t get it– whether the problem is ignorance, or whether there are mutually beneficial relationships between these organizations and RB that encourage the organizations to foster ignorance among
patients and doctors.  I don’t belong to the organizations primarily for this reason– and I blame ASAM and SAMHSA for the current status of addiction treatment as the ‘no science zone’ of modern medicine.

 A few examples of intellectual laziness: 

Example 1:  Physicians who prescribe Suboxone often say that one shouldn’t use buprenorphine ‘because it doesn’t have the opioid blocker and therefore….’ (add whatever here– it causes euphoria, it is addictive, it isn’t safe– any or all of these comments). The statement is partially correct. Generic buprenorphine does not have the opioid blocker naloxone— but naloxone is irrelevant to the actions of Suboxone!

There are TWO opioid blockers in Suboxone, but only one is clinically relevant—the one that is in both Suboxone and generic buprenorphine.  What is the relevant ‘opioid blocker’ that IS
in both Suboxone and generic buprenorphine?  Buprenorphine!   As a partial agonist, buprenorphine has antagonist properties that are responsible for ALL of the effective clinical properties of Suboxone.

Example 2:  Refusing to consider the cost of medication as a factor that determines access to treatment.  Some docs make ‘fear of diversion’ the only factor in determining what to prescribe.  Discussions with hundreds of opioid addicts over the years have convinced me that buprenorphine is rarely a drug of choice.  Rather, it is used by addicts who are sick and tired and want a break from using without withdrawal, or by addicts who have no money or access to agonists.  In such cases, buprenorphine or Suboxone are equally effective– and equally diverted.  When I ask addicts new to treatment about their injecting habits, I often ask whether they injected buprenorphine or Suboxone.  The typical response is either ‘can you do that?’ or ‘why would I do that, since heroin is cheaper?’

In my area, an 8 mg tab of buprenorphine costs as low as $2.33.  This low cost should be part of the equation for choice of medication, just as it is for other illnesses.  Does anyone doubt that there are some people kept from treatment by a price differential of 300%?!  Is it ethical to fear diversion so greatly that treatment is effectively withheld– for a condition with the fatality rate of opioid dependence?!   I’m sure readers know my answer, especially when there are effective ways to reduce diversion, such as close monitoring of prescribed doses, a ‘no replacement’ policy, and drug testing, among others.

Example 3:  There is some question whether the naloxone in Suboxone does anything to reduce diversion. Buprenorphine patients on my forum  who have injected Suboxone in the past have claimed that they did not experience withdrawal from either Suboxone or buprenorphine, consistent with what I would expect from combining a low-affinity antagonist with a high-affinity partial agonist.

Note: Injecting ANYTHING is in essence taking your life in your hands, and I strongly encourage anyone in such a position to seek treatment immediately.   Really—don’t do it.

Example 4:  Insurers generally refuse to cover generic buprenorphine (the generic form of the RB drug Subutex), even though it is much cheaper than Suboxone.  The one time they WILL cover Subutex or buprenorphine is for women who are pregnant or nursing.  The argument is that we shouldn’t expose the fetus/infant to one more drug (naloxone), since that drug isn’t necessary to the actions of Suboxone.  I agree with the argument, and wonder why it is extended only to the fetus?  Why does mom or dad have to be exposed to an extra substance(naloxone) that isn’t necessary to the actions of Suboxone?

I struggle to understand the insurance issue, as I would expect that someone at some major insurer would know enough about pharmacology to save money on Suboxone by favoring generic buprenorphine.

The ultimate of silliness is that the State of Wisconsin requires that people on Medicaid use only Suboxone FILM.  Getting Abilify for a patient is virtually impossible without first using a variety of older, cheaper medications… but the squishy arguments in favor of Suboxone Film push the med up the formulary chain past an alternative that sells at a fraction of the cost.  The film/Medicaid situation is doubly dubious, as we have the arguments for buprenorphine over Suboxone, and the even less-sound argument for Suboxone Film being favored over the tablet.

RB apparently convinced the state that for Medicaid patients, only the film was safe– and that the film should be required instead of the tablet form of Suboxone, placing future generics at a great disadvantage.  It is especially impressive that RB accomplished this feat after selling a million units of the tablets themselves!  I can picture the person making the point:  ‘the tablet is unsafe…. Starting NOW!’

I’m going to write all night if I don’t wrap this up.  To summarize, the Bloomberg article below describes why RB is winning the battle with generics, but the writers of the article, along with most doctors, miss the bigger issue– that misplaced fears, intellectual laziness, and misinformation have protected Suboxone sales from a much greater foe-– generic buprenorphine.  If doctors, states, and insurers ever get their acts together and prescribe according to science, brand name Suboxone profits will go down the toilet faster than the cleaning products made by RB.

The Bloomberg piece:

Reckitt Benckiser Kicks Heroin Tablet Habit With Film: Retail

By Clementine Fletcher

Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc may be kicking its heroin problem.

After losing U.S. patent protection in 2009 for its Suboxone tablet, designed to help heroin users quit, Reckitt Benckiser has said that the entrance of a generic competitor could erode pharmaceutical sales and profit by 80 percent (note by JJ:  What a shame?!  Consider the benefit of such a price reduction for addicts in need of treatment!).

Reckitt Benckiser, which gets most of its revenue from selling home and personal-care products like Lysol cleaners and Durex condoms, has faced calls to sell the business before a generic comes to market. Instead, the London-based company aims to divert the showdown by switching users to a film form of the drug — one whose last patent doesn’t run out until 2025 (note by JJ:  NOW do you see why they made the film?!)

To get people to make the switch, Reckitt Benckiser is thinking more like a consumer company than a pharmaceutical one. It’s drawing on a marketing technique first pioneered by Coca- Cola Co. more than 100 years ago: coupons. By offering up to $45 a month toward a user’s co-payment in the U.S., the company is making the film version, which looks like a Listerine Pocketpak, close to free. That offers patients who get part of the bill subsidized by health insurance little incentive to transfer to a generic pill once it appears on the market.

“They’ve done a good job of making a silk purse out of a not very compelling situation,” said Martin Deboo, an analyst at Investec Securities Ltd. in London.

Reckitt Benckiser’s shares have risen 55 percent in the last five years, outpacing Unilever and Procter & Gamble Co. Under Chief Executive Officer Bart Becht, who stepped down last month, the company more than doubled sales in a decade. The stock has dropped 3.7 percent this year, compared with Unilever’s 4.7 percent gain and P&G’s 1.2 percent gain.

Drugs Growth

The company is due to report third-quarter results tomorrow and will probably say revenue adjusted for purchases and asset sales rose 7 percent at the drugs division, analysts led by Andy Smith at MF Global in London estimate, compared with a 3.9 percent increase for the rest of the business. Profit likely rose 0.9 percent to 430 million pounds, they said.

The film version of Suboxone, introduced in September 2010, accounted for 41 percent of the drug’s U.S. sales by the end of the first half (note by JJ:  Thanks, Wisconsin Badgercare!). That surpassed the company’s own expectations, Becht said on an Aug. 30 conference call arranged by Sanford C. Bernstein. Becht was succeeded by Rakesh Kapoor, a company veteran.

Generic Delay

The film “has been a phenomenal success,” Becht said, according to a transcript of his remarks. “To make the business completely sustainable, we would like to have a share which is clearly much higher than where we are.” He added that the company aims to grow that share every month.

Right now, time is on his side. Teva Pharmaceuticals Industries Ltd., the world’s biggest maker of generics, began the year saying it might launch a Suboxone copy in 2011. Now the company has backed off, saying it no longer expects the product to win regulatory approval this year.

Biodelivery Sciences International Inc., another drugmaker going after Suboxone, said a study comparing its own version of the drug to a placebo failed to show a statistical difference in the treatment of chronic pain. A test in patients addicted to opioids, which include heroin and codeine, is scheduled to begin
later this year. Titan Pharmaceuticals Inc. on Aug. 31 said it’s preparing to seek approval of an upper-arm implant that would deliver buprenorphine, one of
the active ingredients in Suboxone, directly into the bloodstream (note by JJ:  the ONLY active ingredient in Suboxone!)

‘Massive Benefit’

“This delay has been a massive benefit,” said Andrew Wood, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. “With every day that goes by, RB has an extra day to convert users.” Suboxone is either harder-than-expected to copy or generic-drug makers are having second thoughts about targeting addicts, according to Bernstein.

About 1 million people in the U.S. are addicted to heroin, the National Institute on Drug Abuse estimates. As many as 325,000 people use Suboxone to quit the drug or painkillers, says Pablo Zuanic, an analyst at Liberum Capital in London.

The medicine combines buprenorphine, a painkiller derived from the opium poppy that shares some of its properties, with naloxone, a chemical that blunts
withdrawal symptoms (note by JJ:  This is simply WRONG.  BLATANTLY WRONG.  Really–  an opioid antagonist BLUNTING withdrawal symptoms?  Shame on the writers!). The film sells for about $4.63 to $8.23 a dose at Walgreens stores, according to Liberum, depending on its strength and pack size. That means the strongest dose costs about $247 a month.  (note by JJ—a pharmacy near my practice sells generic buprenorphine dissolvable tabs, 8 mg, for $2.33 per tablet—a medication that works EXACTLY the same way IF NOT INJECTED INTRAVENOUSLY)

More than half of people on Suboxone use private insurance with co-pay, Zuanic says. Reckitt Benckiser offers $45 towards co-pay for the film, he said, meaning an insured patient who’d contribute $50 to the cost of the drug may end up spending $5.

‘Near Zero’

“The actual cash cost for some patients buying the film with private insurance could be near zero,” Zuanic said in a note to clients this month. (note by
JJ:  but we are all paying the cost in higher insurance premiums, and some insurers, notably Humana, have draconian policies that stop covering—forcing instant withdrawal- if a patient receives a prescription for a sleep medication such as Ambien, so many people are left paying cash).

Meantime, Suboxone is only becoming more important to Reckitt Benckiser. The drugs division, whose sales grew five times as quickly as the main business last year, accounted for almost 9 percent of sales and 24 percent of profit, up from 7.6 percent and 20 percent in 2009. Sales at the unit will probably rise 12 percent to 829 million pounds ($1.3 billion) this year, according Nomura International Plc estimates.

The maker of French’s mustard is even considering making an injectable Suboxone and developing new products for cocaine, alcohol and cannabis addicts.
The plan has met skepticism.

“We’re quite a long way from having any visibility on these products,” said Julian Hardwick, an analyst at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc in London. “Are they products that will work? Which will get approval?”

Prescription drugs are perceived as a bit of a misfit in the home of Vanish stain removers and Finish dishwasher tablets.

Misfit

“Reckitt Benckiser is basically a home and personal-care company with over-the-counter pharmaceuticals,” said Carl Short, an analyst at Standard & Poor’s in London. The drugs unit is “always going to be something that looks like it doesn’t fit with the rest.”

Reckitt Benckiser may look at selling the unit, which Becht himself has said is “not the No. 1 strategic part” of the company, once a generic form of Suboxone reaches pharmacy shelves, analysts said. (note by JJ:  i.e. after all of the profit has been wrung from suffering addicts).  But the company’s marketing savvy, coupled with delays in the launch of a generic, are giving Kapoor time to settle into his new job.

“This is a big job and he is coming in after someone’s done it for some considerable time and very well,” said Julian Chillingworth, who helps manage about 16 billion pounds in shares at Rathbone Brothers Plc, including Reckitt stock. “You wouldn’t want to come in as a CEO into a very successful business and start selling things off on the cheap.”

Not Time

Analyst valuations range from 2 billion pounds to 6.3 billion pounds, according to four estimates compiled by Bloomberg News. Estimates diverge because it’s hard to value the business without knowing how Suboxone sales will resist the generic challenge and whether the shift to film can counter some of that impact.

“Until you get generic competition for the tablet, I think it’s unlikely that prospective buyers would give you the full value for the business,” said Hardwick of RBS. “Now is not the time to sell.”

–With assistance from Naomi Kresge in Berlin. Editors: Celeste Perri, Marthe Fourcade.

I just wrote a note to a friend who works in the molecular sciences– she has been studying opioid receptors since the early 1980′s, when things were just getting started on a molecular level.  I’m keeping her name to myself, but I’ll share a few thoughts about what is needed to advance the treatement of opioid dependence– and make a few million dollars along the way (are you listening, RB?)

Hi ——,

(private chit chat that would bore everyone)

Anyway, today I realized what is needed in order to take partial agonist treatment of opioid dependence to the next level.

The problem with buprenorphine is that the ‘ceiling effect’ occurs at a relatively high tolerance level, approximately equal to 40 mg of methadone.  That causes at least two problems.  First, going off Suboxone is a lot of work, as the person still has a great deal of withdrawal to go through.  That may be a good thing early in the process, as it may help keep people on Suboxone, but after a year or so, when people want to try going off the medication, it is a major barrier that opens the floodgates to those old memories of using, etched in the emotions associated with withdrawal.

The second problem with the high ceiling/tolerance level is that surgery is a hassle.  People needing surgery need HIGH amounts of oxycodone to get any analgesia—I usually give 15-30 mg every 4 hours.  Pharmacists shudder to release those doses, and some surgeons and anesthesiologists balk.

The horizontal part of the dose/response curve is the essential part of buprenorphine;  that is what tricks the brain into ‘thinking’ that nothing is wearing off, and in that way eliminating cravings.  But that flat dose/response relationship could occur at lower tolerance levels and still work the same way.

Since I’m wishing for the moon, a series of molecules with progressively lower ceiling levels would be ideal, with the last molecule in the series being Naltrexone.  Although actually, naltrexone doesn’t work—it has NO mu agonism, so there is no tricking of the brain, and no reduction of cravings.  We would want something close to naltrexone, but with a tiny bit of opioid activity that does not vary with dose.

A shorter half-life would also be helpful.  Preparing for surgery requires weeks to get the buprenorphine out of the system.  Of course a shorter half-life means it is easier to get around buprenorphine by people who want to play with agonists, so again, these new molecules would be intended as ‘step down’ meds from early-stage buprenorphine treatment.

Do we know enough about molecular actions at the mu receptor to design molecules with these properties?  Or are we still at the point of making somewhat random changes and assaying the result?  Do you know of any labs doing this type of work?

I figured you’re the person to ask!

Thanks ——–

Jeff

I have been kicking these observations around for the past year, and have been unable to find a big fish willing to ‘bite’.  I truly believe that the observations below have the potential to dramatically change the approach to opioid treatment of chronic pain.  Since I have a blog, I have a soapbox– so I’ll share the idea, and welcome comments in return.  I do ask that proper attribution be provided if this article is shared.

Introduction:

Long-term opioid analgesia without tolerance, respiratory depression, or euphoria?  Introducing the Holy Grail for chronic pain treatment!

Premise:

The miracle of opioid pain relief is fatally limited by tolerance, addiction and respiratory depression.  Buprenorphine, when combined with a mu agonist, results in game-changing effects.  Patients experience potent, dose-related analgesia from the agonist, but have NO euphoria.  The therapeutic window is widened.  Patients unable to control their use of a mu agonist alone gain that control when on buprenorphine. And most exciting, buprenorphine indefinitely anchors tolerance, maintaining analgesia WITHOUT DOSE ESCALATION. This finding offers huge implications for pain management.

Discussion:

Use of opioids for chronic pain has severe limitations.  Tolerance removes the benefits of opioid analgesics over time.  Worse, tolerance is associated with dependence and withdrawal.  Many patients use additional doses of their prescription early in the month, then suffer through withdrawal while awaiting refills.  Others find opioids through less-reliable, non-clinical sources.

At the same time, addiction to mu opioids is a nationwide epidemic.  Reformulation Oxycontin has pushed many opioid users toward diacetylmorphine—brand name Heroin.  Some physicians recommend avoiding mu opioids altogether for chronic pain (e.g. Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing), while pain treatment advocates argue to ease narcotic restrictions.

Over the past six years I have treated over 500 patients using buprenorphine, mostly for opioid dependence.  Buprenorphine, a partial mu agonist, is the active ingredient in Suboxone, a medication used for treating opioid dependence. The majority of my patients began their addictions with narcotics prescribed by doctors for back pain, knee pain, shoulder pain, fibromyalgia, chronic headaches, and other conditions.

Many of my patients found their pain reduced or gone after stopping mu agonists and substituting buprenorphine.  Buprenorphine has the mu activity of 40 mg of daily methadone, but this activity is unlikely responsible for significant analgesia, since patients rapidly become tolerant to the agonist actions of buprenorphine. Instead, their pain while on mu agonists was likely maintained by psychological forces.

Patients on buprenorphine occasionally need opioid analgesia, just like other patients.  My patients have had knees replaced, gallbladders removed, hysterectomies and c-sections, rotator cuff repairs, and in two cases, cardiac surgery.  In all cases, sufficient analgesia was provided by maintaining daily buprenorphine at 4-8 mg per day, and using potent mu agonists, usually oxycodone, in doses ranging from 15-45 mg every 4-6 hours as needed.

Several patients have severe chronic pain from avulsion of the brachial plexus, failed spinal fusion, or other conditions, where prior opioid use resulted in rapid tolerance that prevented effective analgesia. These patients are now successfully maintained on combinations of buprenorphine plus mu agonists.

The combination of buprenorphine plus mu agonists has provided perioperative analgesia for patients on buprenorphine.  Patients universally describe adequate pain relief, even after major surgeries.  They also described the absence of euphoria, and to their surprise, the ability to control their use of pain medication—something impossible before taking buprenorphine.

But it is the effects on chronic pain that suggest a ‘game-changer’ for pain treatment.  Even after over a year on combination buprenorphine/oxycodone, my patients 1. have no euphoria;  2. are often able to manage their own narcotic medication; and most important, 3. describe stable analgesia WITHOUT agonist dose escalation.

The ability to treat pain long-term without tolerance or dose-escalation is as exciting a development as was the initial discovery of opioids for pain relief!

Properties of a combination agent

Buprenorphine is administered sublingually, and could be prescribed as a separate medication, and use verified through urine monitoring.   But greater safety benefits would come through regulations requiring buprenorphine (or a similar partial agonist) to be an inseparable part of every opioid prescription.  Such a policy would dramatically lower the addictiveness and reduce the respiratory depression of mu agonists WITHOUT removing efficacy.  The most obvious formulation would be a transdermal system that delivers buprenorphine and fentanyl, since both are already available in separate transdermal systems.

There may be situations, for example hospice care, where euphoria would be a desirable part of opioid treatment.  But for other cases, analgesia without euphoria has obvious benefits.

I have written to several pharmaceutical companies with this idea, and have heard back that while the idea is interesting and scientifically sound, the generic nature of the component medications reduce the potential for profit that would motivate development.  But given the potential value of this approach for multiple problems– addiction and chronic pain among them—I have to think that there is money to be made—not to mention the advances in treatment that the approach offers.

Reference:

Some supporting background information can be found in:  Alford, D., P Compton, and J Samet, Acute Pain Management for Patients Receiving Maintenance Methadone or Buprenorphine Therapy.  Ann Intern Med. 2006 January 17; 144(2): 127–134.

I also discuss this approach to pain treatment in my ‘Users Guide to Suboxone’, sold on Amazon and at bupeguide.com

Jeffrey T Junig MD PhD

Please do not reproduce without attribution.