The approval “is an important milestone of public health in the management of acute pain,” Jacqueline Corrigan-Curay, JD, MD, interim director of the FDA Drug Evaluation and Drug Research Center said in a statement. “A new analgesic therapeutic class does not opioid for acute pain offers the opportunity to mitigate certain risks associated with the use of an opioid for pain and provides patients with another treatment option.”
The company behind the medicine, VERTEX, said that a 50 mg pill that works for 12 hours will have a wholesale cost of $ 15.50, which makes the daily cost $ 31 and the weekly cost of $ 217. The cost is more high than cheap generic opioids. But, A report from the Clinical and Economic Review Institute in December Estimated that suzetrigine would be “slightly cost savings” in relation to opioids if the price was set at $ 420 per week, given the capacity of the medication to avoid cases of opioid addiction.
In a statement, Reshma Kewalramani, CEO and president of VERTEX, announced approval as a “historical milestone for the 80 million people in the United States who are prescribed a medicine for acute pain from moderate to severe every year … [W]E have the opportunity to change the paradigm of acute pain management and establish a new standard of attention. “