Opioid Medication Use Among Chronic Non-Cancer Pain Patients Assessed with a Modified Drug Effects Questionnaire and the Association with Opioid Use Disorder.

PURPOSE: Identifying opioid use disorder (OUD) in patients prescribed opioid therapy for chronic pain is challenging but critically important. Patients may have multiple reasons for taking medications, which they may not reveal if not properly interviewed. In this study, modified Drug Effects Questionnaires (DEQ) were used to assess the liking of and desire to take prescription opioids both for reasons of pain relief and for reasons excluding pain relief. We hypothesized patients would more strongly endorse their medications for reasons of pain relief compared to reasons excluding pain relief, and patients who endorse medications for reasons excluding pain relief may be at higher risk of developing OUD. PATIENTS AND METHODS: A cross-sectional telephone survey was administered to 200 adult outpatients currently being prescribed opioids. A two-year retrospective analysis of electronic health records supplemented survey findings. RESULTS: Based on DSM-5 criteria, 9.0% (n = 18) of patients had moderate or severe OUD. The mean (SD) for drug-liking was 54 (33.4) on a 0 to 100 scale. When liking for pain relief was specified, the mean (SD) was significantly higher compared to when excluding pain relief was specified, 70 (27.8) vs 24 (31.2), p<0.001. A similar pattern was observed for patients' ratings of desire to take their medication again, and "feel good effects" of their medications. Higher scores on items that excluded pain relief were associated with other indications of drug misuse. CONCLUSION: The observed rate of OUD in this patient sample was consistent with findings from other recent research. A better understanding of patients' reasons for using opioid medication may help researchers and health care providers identify those at greatest risk for developing OUD.

Current and potential pharmacological treatment options for insomnia in patients with alcohol use disorder in recovery.

Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is characterized by dysfunction in motivational, mood-stress regulation, and sleep systems that interact in complex ways to heighten the risk of relapse during abstinence. Emerging data suggest that excessive and chronic alcohol use disrupts sleep homeostasis and, in abstinence, subjects with AUD are known to experience insomnia that may persist for weeks to years, which we propose to refer to as insomnia associated with alcohol cessation (IAAC). The purpose of this review is to provide an update of pharmacological approaches to therapy including compounds in development, to raise awareness of the prevalence of and unmet need in IAAC and highlight differences in treatment consideration for IAAC as compared to insomnia disorder. We performed a search of select electronic databases to identify studies of pharmacological agents used to treat sleep disturbances in abstinent or treatment-seeking patients with alcohol use disorder. The search, conducted in June 2019 and updated in December 2019, yielded 1,188 abstracts after duplicates were removed, of which 36 full-text articles were assessed for eligibility. Eighteen studies were included, 15 randomized controlled trials and three open-label studies. Several classes of medications including antidepressants, anticonvulsants, and antipsychotics have been evaluated for their effectiveness in treating sleep disturbances in abstinent or treatment-seeking patients with AUD. None of these medications are approved by the FDA for the treatment of IAAC, and the currently available evidence for these agents is limited. Randomized, controlled clinical trials are warranted to evaluate the efficacy and safety of medications in the treatment of IAAC.