From the pages of Politico:
HHS split on CDC opioid prescription guidelines
A panel set up to coordinate pain research across the federal government is blasting a CDC proposal to rein in opioid prescribing set for release next month.
Members of the NIH's Interagency Pain Research Coordinating Committee, which was created by Obamacare and includes the FDA, AHRQ and the Department of Veterans Affairs, announced at a meeting Thursday that they plan to file a formal objection to the CDC prescribing guidelines. Those guidelines are a key piece of the administration's effort to combat the prescription overdose epidemic that claims more than 16,000 lives a year.
The level of evidence cited to support the guidelines, which are non-binding on physicians, "is low to very low and that's a problem," said Sharon Hertz, FDA's director of the Division of Anesthesia, Analgesia and Addiction Products.
AHRQ health scientist Richard Ricciardi called the recommendations "ridiculous" and "an embarrassment to the government."
The dissension within HHS adds to a chorus of complaints from both the pain community and major medical groups including the American Medical Association and the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, which have criticized CDC's selection of experts and the limited opportunity for public input on the guidelines. CDC has not released a draft but an early version has circulated.
Wanda Jones, principal deputy assistant secretary for health at HHS, told the interagency committee members that they should still register objections, even though time is running out. She said the CDC process had been "shortsighted" and rushed. "You know, damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead."
Jones is not a member of the NIH committee but provided an update on the National Pain Strategy.
Several committee members were frustrated that the response to the opioid epidemic appeared to trump a broader effort underway to develop an integrated strategy to combat pain and could in fact hinder it by limiting access to certain necessary drugs.
"We have both a pain and an opioid use disorder problem. Both are important. Both are serious," said Richard Frank, HHS assistant secretary for planning and evaluation.
CDC did not respond to a request for comment.
CDC policy official Sara Patterson told the interagency group by conference call that the guidelines' three main goals are to have providers prescribe non-opioid options for pain when possible; to use the lowest effective dose when opioids are necessary, and to actively evaluate the risk and potential harms of ongoing treatment. The CDC is not recommending any changes in the role of opioids in treating cancer pain for palliative care.
Each category has a number of specific guidelines, and many are characterized as a "strong recommendation" with "low evidence" or "very low evidence" because of the lack of randomized control trials. Patterson said that they were supported by an exhaustive literature review, however, including a 2014 AHRQ review of "The Effectiveness and Risks of Long-Term Opioid Treatment of Chronic Pain."
AHRQ found scant evidence that opioids control chronic pain and that long-term use had serious risks. Deaths from prescription painkillers have quadrupled since 1999, according to the CDC, topping 16,000 in 2013. Nearly 2 million Americans either abused or were addicted to the drugs that year, the agency estimates. In 2012, health care providers wrote 259 million prescriptions for the drugs - enough for every American adult to have a bottle of the pills.
Patterson emphasized that the guidelines would be "non-regulatory" - meaning non-binding - and that the CDC "stands by" them.
The CDC effort is part the Obama administration's efforts to combat the epidemic, including expanding access to overdose antidote naloxone, making medication assisted addiction treatment more available, and improving state prescription drug monitoring programs.
