BioCentury
ARTICLE | Politics & Policy

EMA updating guidance on pain products

June 1, 2013 12:19 AM UTC

EMA issued draft guidance on the clinical development of products to treat pain. The draft will update and merge two current guidelines on nociceptive and neuropathic pain, which were respectively published in 2002 and 2005. The agency said that since the two guidances were published, the different pathophysiological mechanisms and pathways at the origin of pain have become better understood and it now appears that certain pain conditions like cancer pain can have both nociceptive and neuropathic elements. Nociceptive pain is defined as pain due to the activation of nociceptors, while neuropathic pain is defined as pain arising as a direct consequence of a lesion or disease affecting the peripheral nervous system (PNS) or CNS. ...