US drug agency approves potent painkiller — the first non-opioid in decades

When Terp Vairin awoke from a 2023 surgery that straightened a bend in her nasal passage, she felt like she’d taken a hard punch to the nose. As the anaesthetic wore off, she called out for something to ease the pain and was pleasantly surprised. The drug she received — a new kind of analgesic administered as part of a clinical trial — eased her discomfort without the grogginess or nausea of an opioid.

“I felt very lucid,” says Vairin, an artist from Decatur, Georgia.

Now, millions more people will soon have access to this painkiller — a drug called suzetrigine that works by selectively blocking sodium channels on pain-sensing nerve cells and delivers opioid-level pain suppression without the risks of addiction, sedation or overdose. On Thursday, the US Food and Drug Administration approved suzetrigine for short-term pain management, making it the first pain drug given a regulatory nod in more than 20 years that works through a brand-new mechanism.

Continue reading at Nature.