Announcer:
0:00
Welcome to the MedEvidence Monday Minute Radio Show hosted by Kevin Gettings of WSOS St Augustine Radio and powered by Encore Research Group. Each Monday morning, dr Michael Koren calls in to bring you the latest medical updates with insightful discussions. Medevidence is where we help you navigate the real truth behind medical research, with both a clinical and research perspective. So sit back, relax and get ready to learn about the truth behind the data in medicine and healthcare. This is MedEvidence.
Kevin Geddings:
0:31
Hey, it is 8.30 exactly. Dr. Michael Koren joins us and of course he is a medical doctor, cardiologist, research scientist and we appreciate him being a part of our family. He's been working with us on getting good information out for years now. You can learn more about the work that he does in clinical trials and how you can participate in a leading edge medical trial that could tie to some health issue you're dealing with. Go to EncoreDocscom. That's EncoreDocscom, and we're going to talk a little bit too about another website he's involved with, but we'll get to that. But some big news last Friday on the pain medication front here in the United States Finally, an alternative to OxyContin right.
Dr. Michael Koren:
1:11
Yeah, it's pretty exciting. So when we run clinical trials, ultimately the objective is to get new products in the marketplace, and we did have a success that was announced. This past week. The FDA approved a drug called Jernovex or , and it's a drug that's a brand new class of pain medication, and this class of pain medication blocks the signaling between the peripheral nerves and the brain, rather than working at the level of the brain where narcotics work. So we're excited about it. We're particularly excited about it because we were involved in those clinical trials.
Kevin Geddings:
1:47
That is exciting Right here in our part of the world, in Northeast Florida right.
Dr. Michael Koren:
1:51
Absolutely.
Kevin Geddings:
1:52
So I guess just that.
Dr. Michael Koren:
1:54
I think it's really important to thank people for their participation. Obviously, clinical trials bring some benefits to the people who are involved in them, but it also helps everybody around the world. So a big thanks to people who participate in the trial and their families for supporting them.
Kevin Geddings:
2:09
Yeah, absolutely so. I guess, in a practical way, if one of our listeners driving around today recently had knee replacement surgery and they were given blank drug for pain, they may now, in the future, get to have this new drug. Is that safe to say?
Dr. Michael Koren:
2:26
Yeah, I think so. Obviously, once the FDA approves a medication, it's up to physicians to decide how to deploy that, and we'll see. The studies are mostly done in people that had peripheral neuropathies or pain related to diabetes in the feet, for example, but this medicine will probably continue to be developed in different ways, and how physicians use it will be something that will develop over the course of the next couple of years.
Kevin Geddings:
2:54
Right. If somebody is concerned about taking a narcotic, or perhaps the addictive aspects of something like Oxycontin or one of its derivatives, should they ask their physician about this new drug.
Dr. Michael Koren:
3:07
Absolutely. They should definitely have a discussion about it, and you make a really important point. So, Kevin, 30 years ago there was a big push to make sure that people had their pain adequately treated. In fact, if you went to an emergency room, they would call pain the fifth vital sign, and the focus was on making sure that everybody had complete pain relief. Unfortunately, there was an unintended consequence of that, and the consequence was that a lot of narcotics were used and some people got addicted to them. So it became a problem that people would come in, get a short course of narcotics for an acute pain syndrome and then ends up with a bad addiction that took months or years to get over.
Dr. Michael Koren:
3:48
So there has been a real big change in course amongst government policy, and the medical profession has now been focused on trying to restrict the use of narcotics as much as possible, and this approval will make that much more feasible, I think, for a lot of people, because they have a new class of drugs. And again, how widely these drugs are used once they're generally available will be something that's very, very interesting and we can watch. The other thing is that, for people who are interested in this, give us a call because we may get involved in other studies that look how to deploy this medication post-approval. We call that a phase four trial. So after our drugs are approved they still get tested and we test them to see how extensively they can be used, what patients they can be used and whether they can be used safely and effectively with other medications.
Kevin Geddings:
4:38
So, Dr. Koren, when it gets to a phase four trial, are there placebos involved or not?
Dr. Michael Koren:
4:44
It may or may not be, it depends on the circumstances. But, to your point, in many cases there are not. So we're comparing it against some active comparator, which is a little bit different than the early phase trials, which are typically placebo controlled.
Kevin Geddings:
4:59
So does this represent a new class of drugs or just a new drug? In other words, this one pharmaceutical company has this name drug, but will there be others like it, you think?
Dr. Michael Koren:
5:08
Probably so. Again, it's the first in the class and I don't know offhand how other drugs in this class are being developed, but typically once one company is successful getting a drug to market, others will follow.
Kevin Geddings:
5:21
Well, if folks are interested in this and this exciting new approach, this great new development in pain management, they should get in ENCORE Research Group with , shouldn't they?
Dr. Michael Koren:
5:34
They should Give us a call. We may or may not have a program specific for your immediate need, but we'll definitely get you in our system and talk about all the stuff we're doing. It's interesting Some people may come in and they may complain about a diabetic neuropathy, which is really troublesome for them, but then we find out hey, you know, you got pretty significant issues with your heart. Maybe that's the most important thing right now to deal with.
Kevin Geddings:
5:55
And before we let Dr. Koren go, of course there's always this flurry of health and medical news out there. This, you know, big news about this new drug that came out on Friday. But there's so much other health information out there and unfortunately a lot of it is bad. But we have a place to go where you can get reliable health information, right, doctor.
Dr. Michael Koren:
6:14
Yeah, and that's our MedEvidence platform, m-e-d evidence platform, and it's growing by leaps and bounds. As we talked about last week, we had the Tony Fauci interview about 10 days ago and, of course, that generated a lot of discussion. He came across really, really well and, as you mentioned last week, the last public interview that he did before he got his get out of jail free card from Joe Biden was with me and MetEvidence. So I'm excited about that and I would encourage everybody to listen to his perspective. It's interesting. Tony Fauci has been just a serious scientist throughout his life but has become a bit of a political punching bag recently and maybe you need to hear from him directly before you make a decision. So it was a fun interview for me and hopefully enjoyable and educational about many things Dr. Fauci did during his career.
Kevin Geddings:
7:11
Absolutely. I would encourage you to do that Once again. Lots of great resources, good information, easy to navigate, very intuitive, simple to use. Go to medevidence. com. Medevidence. com the truth behind all this healthcare data that we sometimes get thrown at us like a snowblower. So this is a great resource. Dr. Michael Koren, any closing thoughts before we let you go on this Monday morning? So this is a great resource.
Dr. Michael Koren:
7:34
Dr. Michael Koren, any closing thoughts before we let you go on this Monday morning? No, the only closing thought would be the same as our opening thought, which is again, thank you for the participation of our patients and give us a call if we can be of service.
Kevin Geddings:
7:45
That's right, Dr. Michael Koren, once again EncoreDocs. com.
Announcer:
7:49
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