NOWS – NIH Director's Blog (original) (raw)
Help for Babies Born Dependent on Opioids
Posted on May 2nd, 2023 by Lawrence Tabak, D.D.S., Ph.D.
Credit: Shutterstock/Alena Ozerova
It’s been estimated that every 18 minutes in the United States, a newborn baby starts life with painful withdrawals from exposure to opioids in the womb. It’s called neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome (NOWS), and it makes for a challenging start in life. These infants may show an array of withdrawal symptoms, including tremors, extreme irritability, and problems eating and sleeping.
Many of these infants experience long, difficult hospital stays to help them manage their withdrawal symptoms. But because hospital staff have no established evidence-based treatment standards to rely on, there is substantial variation in NOWS treatment around the country. There also are many open questions about the safest and most-effective way to support these babies and their families.
But answers are coming. The New England Journal of Medicine just published clinical trial results that evaluated care for infants with NOWS and which offer some much needed—and rather encouraging—data for families and practitioners [1]. The data are from the Eating, Sleeping, Consoling for Neonatal Opioid Withdrawal (ESC-NOW) trial, led by Leslie W. Young, The University of Vermont’s Larner College of Medicine, Burlington, and her colleagues Lori Devlin and Stephanie Merhar.
The ESC-NOW study is supported through the Advancing Clinical Trials in Neonatal Opioid Withdrawal (ACT NOW) Collaborative. ACT NOW is an essential part of the NIH Helping to End Addiction Long-term (HEAL) Initiative, an aggressive effort to speed scientific solutions to stem the national opioid public health crisis and improve lives.
The latest study puts to the test two different approaches to care for newborns with NOWS. The first approach relies on the Finnegan Neonatal Abstinence Scoring Tool. For almost 50 years, doctors primarily assessed NOWS using this tool. It is based on a scoring system of 21 signs of withdrawal, including disturbances in a baby’s nervous system, metabolism, breathing, digestion, and more. However, there have been concerns that this scoring tool has led to an overreliance on treating babies with opioid medications, including morphine and methadone.
The other approach is known as Eat, Sleep, Console (ESC) care [2]. First proposed in 2014, ESC care has been adopted in many hospitals around the world. Rather than focusing on a long list of physical signs of withdrawal, this approach relies on a simpler functional assessment of whether an infant can eat, sleep, and be consoled. It emphasizes treatments other than medication, such as skin-to-skin contact, breastfeeding, and care from their mothers or other caregivers in a calm and nurturing environment.
The ESC care approach places an emphasis on the use of supportive interventions and aims to empower families in the care and nurturing of their infants. While smaller quality improvement studies of ESC have been compelling, the question at issue is whether the Eat, Sleep, Console care approach can reduce the time until infants with NOWS are medically ready to go home from the hospital in a wide variety of hospital settings—and, most importantly, whether it can do so safely.
To find out, the ESC-NOW team enrolled 1,305 infants with NOWS who were born after at least 36 weeks gestation. The study’s young participants were largely representative of infants with NOWS in the U.S., although non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic infants were slightly overrepresented. The babies were born at one of 26 U.S. hospitals, and each hospital was randomly assigned to transition from usual care using the Finnegan tool to the ESC care approach at a designated time.
Each hospital had a three-month transition period between the usual care and the ESC to allow clinical teams time to train on the new approach. The trial primarily aimed to understand if there was a significant difference in how long newborns with NOWS spent in the hospital before being medically ready for discharge between those receiving usual care versus those receiving ESC care. Researchers also assessed infants for safety, tracking both safety events that occurred during the hospital stay and events that occurred after the baby left the hospital, such as non-accidental trauma or death during an infant’s first three months.
The reported results reflect 837 of the 1,305 infants, who met the study definition of being medically ready for discharge. Infants who were discharged before meeting the study criteria, which were informed by the 2012 American Academy of Pediatrics recommendations for monitoring of infants with NOWS, were not included in the primary analysis.
Among the 837 infants, those who received ESC care were medically ready for discharge significantly sooner than those who received usual care. On average, they were medically ready to go home after about eight days compared to almost 15 days for the usual care group.
Many fewer infants in the ESC care group were treated with opioids compared to the usual care group (19.5 percent versus 52.0 percent). In more good news for ESC care, there was no difference in safety outcomes through the first three months despite the shorter hospital stays and reduced opioid treatment in the hospital. Infants who were cared for using the ESC care approach were no more likely to visit the doctor’s office, emergency room, or hospital after being discharged from the hospital.
More long-term study is needed to evaluate these children over months and years as they continue to develop and grow. Many of the infants in this study will be evaluated for the first two years of life to assess the long-term impact of ESC care on development and other outcomes. These findings offer encouraging early evidence that the ESC care approach is safe and effective. Although there was some variability in the outcomes, this study also shows that this approach can work well across diverse hospitals and communities.
The ESC-NOW trial is just one portion of the NIH Heal Initiative’s ACT NOW program, focused on gathering scientific evidence on how to care for babies with NOWS. Other studies are evaluating how to safely wean babies who do receive treatment with medication off opioids more quickly. The ACT NOW Longitudinal Study also will enroll at least 200 babies with prenatal opioid exposure and another 100 who were not exposed to better understand the long-term implications of early opioid exposure.
I’ve been anxious to see the results of the ESC-NOW study for a few months. It’s been worth the wait. The results show that we’re headed in the right direction with learning how best to treat NOWS and help to improve the lives of these young children and their families in the months and years ahead.
References:
[1] Eat, Sleep, Console Approach versus usual care for neonatal opioid withdrawal. Young LW, Ounpraseuth ST, Merhar SL, Newman S, Snowden JN, Devlin LA, et al. NEJM, 2023 Apr 30 [Published online ahead of print]
[2] An initiative to improve the quality of care of infants with neonatal abstinence syndrome. Grossman MR, Berkwitt AK, Osborn RR, Xu Y, Esserman DA, Shapiro ED, Bizzarro MJ. Pediatrics. 2017 Jun;139(6):e20163360.
Links:
SAMHSA’s National Helpline (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Rockville, MD)
“Eat, Sleep, Console” reduces hospital stay and need for medication among opioid-exposed infants, NIH news release, May 1, 2023
Helping to End Addiction Long-term® (HEAL) Initiative (NIH)
Advancing Clinical Trials in Neonatal Opioid Withdrawal (ACT NOW)
Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program (NIH)
Leslie Young (The University of Vermont, Larner College of Medicine, Burlington)
NIH Support: The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences; Office of the Director
Posted In: News
Tags: ACT NOW, addiction, clinical care, clinical trial, eat sleep console, ESC-NOW, evidence-based care, Finnegan Neonatal Abstinence Scoring Tool, Helping to End Addiction Long-term, infant health, neonatal care, neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome, NOWS, opioid withdrawal, opioids
Research to Address the Real-Life Challenges of Opioid Crisis
Posted on May 10th, 2022 by Lawrence Tabak, D.D.S., Ph.D.
Caption: NIDA Director Nora Volkow (center), HEAL Initiative Director Rebecca Baker (right), and I discuss NIH’s latest efforts to combat opioid crisis. Credit: Pierce Harman for Rx Drug Abuse & Heroin Summit 2022.
While great progress has been made in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic, America’s opioid crisis continues to evolve in unexpected ways. The opioid crisis, which worsened during the pandemic and now involves the scourge of fentanyl, claims more than 70,000 lives each year in the United States [1]. But throughout the pandemic, NIH has continued its research efforts to help people with a substance use disorder find the help that they so need. These efforts include helping to find relief for the millions of Americans who live with severe and chronic pain.
Recently, I traveled to Atlanta for the Rx and Illicit Drug Summit 2022. While there, I moderated an evening fireside chat with two of NIH’s leaders in combating the opioid crisis: Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA); and Rebecca Baker, director of Helping to End Addiction Long-term® (HEAL) initiative. What follows is an edited, condensed transcript of our conversation.
Tabak: Let’s start with Nora. When did the opioid crisis begin, and how has it changed over the years
Volkow: It started just before the year 2000 with the over-prescription of opioid medications. People were becoming addicted to them, many from diverted product. By 2010, CDC developed guidelines that decreased the over-prescription. But then, we saw a surge in heroin use. That turned the opioid crisis into two problems: prescription opioids and heroin.
In 2016, we encountered the worst scourge yet. It is fentanyl, an opioid that’s 50 times more potent than heroin. Fentanyl is easily manufactured, and it’s easier than other opioids to hide and transport across the border. That makes this drug very profitable.
What we have seen during the pandemic is the expansion of fentanyl use in the United States. Initially, fentanyl made its way to the Northeast; now it’s everywhere. Initially, it was used to contaminate heroin; now it’s used to contaminate cocaine, methamphetamine, and, most recently, illicit prescription drugs, such as benzodiazepines and stimulants. With fentanyl contaminating all these drugs, we’re also seeing a steep rise in mortality from cocaine and methamphetamine use in African Americans, American Indians, and Alaska natives.
Tabak: What about teens? A recent study in the journal JAMA reported for the first time in a decade that overdose deaths among U.S. teens rose dramatically in 2020 and kept rising through 2021 [2]. Is fentanyl behind this alarming increase?
Volkow: Yes, and it has us very concerned. The increase also surprised us. Over the past decade, we have seen a consistent decrease in adolescent drug use. In fact, there are some drugs that have the lowest usage rates that we’ve ever recorded. To observe this more than doubling of overdose deaths from fentanyl before the COVID pandemic was a major surprise.
Adolescents don’t typically use heroin, nor do they seek out fentanyl. Our fear is adolescents are misusing illicit prescriptions contaminated with fentanyl. Because an estimated 30-40 percent of those tainted pills contain levels of fentanyl that can kill you, it becomes a game of Russian roulette. This dangerous game is being played by adolescents who may just be experimenting with illicit pills.
Tabak: For people with substance use disorders, there are new ways to get help. In fact, one of the very few positive outcomes of the pandemic is the emergence of telehealth. If we can learn to navigate the various regulatory issues, do you see a place for telehealth going forward?
Volkow: When you have a crisis like this one, there’s a real need to accelerate interventions and innovation like telehealth. It certainly existed before the pandemic, and we knew that telehealth was beneficial for the treatment of substance use disorders. But it was very difficult to get reimbursement, making access extremely limited.
When COVID overwhelmed emergency departments, people with substance use disorders could no longer get help there. Other interventions were needed, and telehealth helped fill the void. It also had the advantage of reaching rural populations in states such as Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio, where easy access to treatment or unique interventions can be challenging. In many prisons and jails, administrators worried about bringing web-based technologies into their facilities. So, in partnership with the Justice Department, we have created networks that now will enable the entry of telehealth into jails and prisons.
Tabak: Rebecca, it’s been four years since the HEAL initiative was announced at this very summit in 2018. How is the initiative addressing this ever-evolving crisis?
Baker: We’ve launched over 600 research projects across the country at institutions, hospitals, and research centers in a broad range of scientific areas. We’re working to come up with new treatment options for pain and addiction. There’s exciting research underway to address the craving and sleep disruption caused by opioid withdrawal. This research has led to over 20 investigational new drug applications to the FDA. Some are for repurposed drugs, compounds that have already been shown to be safe and effective for treating other health conditions that may also have value for treating addiction. Some are completely novel. We have also initiated the first testing of an opioid vaccine, for oxycodone, to prevent relapse and overdose in high-risk individuals.
Tabak: What about clinical research?
Baker: We’re testing multiple different treatments for both pain and addiction. Not everyone with pain is the same, and not every treatment is going to work the same for everyone. We’re conducting clinical trials in real-world settings to find out what works best for patients. We’re also working to implement lifesaving, evidence-based interventions into places where people seek help, including faith, community, and criminal justice settings.
Tabak: The pandemic highlighted inequities in our health-care system. These inequities afflict individuals and populations who are struggling with addiction and overdose. Nora, what needs to be done to address the social determinants of racial disparities?
Volkow: This is an extraordinarily important question. As you noted, certain racial and ethnic groups had disproportionately higher mortality rates from COVID. We have seen the same with overdose deaths. For example, we know that the most important intervention for preventing overdoses is to initiate medications such as methadone, buprenorphine or vivitrol. But Black Americans are initiated on these medications at least five years later than white Americans. Similarly, Black Americans also are less likely to receive the overdose-reversal medication naloxone.
That’s not right. We must ask what are the core causes of limited access to high-quality health care? Low income is a major contributing factor. Helping people get an education is one of the most important factors to address it. Another factor is distrust of the medical system. When racial and ethnic discrimination is compounded by discrimination because a person has a substance use disorder, you can see why it becomes very difficult for some to seek help. As a society, we certainly need to address racial discrimination. But we also need to address discrimination against substance use disorders in people of all races who are vulnerable.
Baker: Our research is tackling these barriers head on with a direct focus on stigma. As Nora alluded to, oftentimes providers may not offer lifesaving medication to some patients, and we’ve developed and are testing research training to help providers recognize and address their own biases and behaviors in caring for different populations.
We have supported research on the drivers of equity. A big part of this is engaging with people with lived experience and making sure that the interventions being designed are feasible in the real world. Not everyone has access to health insurance, transportation, childcare—the support that they may need to sustain treatment and recovery. In short, our research is seeking ways to enhance linkage to treatment.
Nora mentioned the importance of telehealth in improving equity. That’s another research focus, as well as developing tailored, culturally appropriate interventions for addressing pain and addiction. When you have this trust issue, you can’t always go in with a prescription or a recommendation from a physician. So in American and Alaskan native communities, we’re integrating evidence-based prevention approaches with traditional practices like wellness gatherings, cooking together, use of sage and spirituality, along with community support, and seeing if that encourages and increases the uptake of these prevention approaches in communities that need it so much.
Tabak: The most heartbreaking impact of the opioid crisis has been the infants born dependent on opioids. Rebecca, what’s being done to help the very youngest victims of the opioid crisis born with neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome, or NOWS?
Baker: Thanks for asking about the infants. Babies with NOWS undergo withdrawal at birth and cry inconsolably, often with extreme stomach upset and sometimes even with seizures. Our research found that hospitals across the country vary greatly in how they treat these babies. Our program, ACT NOW, or Advancing Clinical Trials in Neonatal Opioid Withdrawal, aims to provide concrete guidance for nurses in the NICU treating these infants. One of the studies that we call Eat, Sleep, Console focuses on the abilities of the baby. Our researchers are testing if the ability to eat, sleep, or be consoled increases bonding with the mother and if it reduces time in the hospital, as well as other long-term health outcomes.
In addition to that NOWS program, we’ve also launched the HEALthy Brain and Child Development Study, or HBCD, that seeks to understand the long-term consequences of opioid exposure together with all the other environmental and other factors the baby experiences as they grow up. The hope is that together these studies will inform future prevention and treatment efforts for both mental health and also substance use and addiction.
Tabak: As the surge in heroin use and appearance of fentanyl has taught us, the opioid crisis has ever-changing dynamics. It tells us that we need better prevention strategies. Rebecca, could you share what HEAL is doing about prevention?
Baker: Prevention has always been a core component of the HEAL Initiative in a number of ways. The first is by preventing unnecessary opioid exposures through enhanced and evidence-based pain management. HEAL is supporting research on new small molecules, new devices, new biologic therapeutics that could treat pain and distinct pain conditions without opioids. And we’re also researching and providing guidance for clinicians on strategies for managing pain without medication, including acupuncture and physical therapy. They can often be just as effective and more sustainable.
HEAL is also working to address risky opioid use outside of pain management, especially in high-risk groups. That includes teens and young adults who may be experimenting, people lacking stable housing, patients who are on high-dose opioids for pain management, or they maybe have gone off high-dose opioids but still have them in their possession.
Finally, to prevent overdose we have to give naloxone to the people who need it. The HEALing Communities Study has taken some really innovative approaches to providing naloxone in libraries, on the beach, and places where overdoses are actually happening, not just in medical settings. And I think that will be, in our fight against the overdose crisis, a key tool.
Volkow: Larry, I’d like to add a few words on prevention. There are evidence-based interventions that have been shown to be quite effective for preventing substance use among teenagers and young adults. And yet, they are not implemented. We have evidence-based interventions that work for prevention. We have evidence-based interventions that work for treatment. But we don’t provide the resources for their implementation, nor do we train the personnel that can carry it over.
Science can give us tools, but if we do not partner at the next level for their implementation, those tools do not have the impact they should have. That’s why I always bring up the importance of policy in the implementation phase.
Tabak: Rebecca, the opioid crisis got started with a lack of good options for treating pain. Could you share with us how HEAL’s research efforts are addressing the needs of millions of Americans who experience both chronic pain and opioid use disorder?
Baker: It’s so important to remember people with pain. We can’t let our efforts to combat the opioid crisis make us lose sight of the needs of the millions of Americans with pain. One hundred million Americans experience pain; half of them have severe pain, daily pain, and 20 million have such severe pain that they can’t do things that are important to them in their life, family, job, other activities that bring their life meaning.
HEAL recognizes that these individuals need better options. New non-addictive pain treatments. But as you say, there is a special need for people with a substance use disorder who also have pain. They desperately need new and better options. And so we recently, through the HEAL Initiative, launched a new trials network that couples medication-based treatment for opioid use disorders, so that’s methadone or buprenorphine, with new pain-management strategies such as psychotherapy or yoga in the opioid use disorder treatment setting so that you’re not sending them around to lots of different places. And our hope is that this integrated approach will address some of the fragmented healthcare challenges that often results in poor care for these patients.
My last point would be that some patients need opioids to function. We can’t forget as we make sure that we are limiting risky opioid use that we don’t take away necessary opioids for these patients, and so our future research will incorporate ways of making sure that they receive needed treatment while also preventing them from the risks of opioid use disorder.
Tabak: Rebecca, let me ask you one more question. What do you want the folks here to remember about HEAL?
Baker: HEAL stands for Helping to End Addiction Long-term, and nobody knows more than the people in this room how challenging and important that really is. We’ve heard a little bit about the great promise of our research and some of the advances that are coming through our research pipeline, new treatments, new guidance for clinicians and caregivers. I want everyone to know that we want to work with you. By working together, I’m confident that we will tailor these new advances to meet the individual needs of the patients and populations that we serve.
Tabak: Nora, what would you like to add?
Volkow: This afternoon, I met with two parents who told me the story of how they lost their daughter to an overdose. They showed me pictures of this fantastic girl, along with her drawings. Whenever we think about overdose deaths in America, the sheer number—75,000—can make us indifferent. But when you can focus on one person and feel the love surrounding that life, you remember the value of this work.
Like in COVID, substance use disorders are a painful problem that we’re all experiencing in some way. They may have upset our lives. But they may have brought us together and, in many instances, brought out the best that humans can do. The best, to me, is caring for one another and taking the responsibility of helping those that are most vulnerable. I believe that science has a purpose. And here we have a purpose: to use science to bring solutions that can prevent and treat those suffering from substance use disorders.
Tabak: Thanks to both of you for this enlightening conversation.
References:
Links:
Video: Evening Plenary with NIH’s Lawrence Tabak, Nora Volkow, and Rebecca Baker (Rx and Illicit Drug Summit 2022)
SAMHSA’s National Helpline (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Rockville, MD)
Opioids (National Institute on Drug Abuse/NIH)
Fentanyl (NIDA)
Helping to End Addiction Long-term®(HEAL) Initiative (NIH)
Rebecca Baker (HEAL/NIH)
Nora Volkow (NIDA)
Posted In: Generic
Tags: addiction, African American health, benzodiazepine, buprenorphine, cocaine, COVID-19, drugs, fentanyl, HEAL, HEALing Communities Study, health disparities, Helping to End Addiction Long-term, heroin, jails, methadone, methamphetamine, naloxone, neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome, NIDA, Nora Volkow, NOWS, opioid crisis, opioid medications, opioid overdoses, opioid use disorder, opioids, oxycodone, pain, pain management, pandemic, prevention, prisons, Rebecca Baker, Rx and Illicit Drug Summit, RxDrug Abuse and Heroin Summit, stimulants, substance use disorders, teens, telehealth