Heritability of Opioid Effects: A Twin Study

• Status: Completed
• Trial end date: 2010-06-01
• Target enrollment: 0
• Participant gender: All

Summary

Proposed twin study will test to what degree inter-individual differences in pain sensitivity and amount of pain relief in response to opioid therapy are inherited or alternatively, are due to environmental factors. This knowledge is important to guide future studies trying to explain such inter-individual differences. For example, finding that differences are largely due to environmental factors would discourage genomic studies and emphasize epidemiological studies.

• Phase: N/A
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers?: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Details

• Lead Sponsor: Martin Angst
• Collaborator: SRI International
• Treatments: Alfentanil

Criteria

Inclusion Criteria:Monozygotic or dizygotic twins ages 18-70

Exclusion Criteria:(1) Clinically relevant systemic diseases such as psychiatric, neurological, and dermatological conditions interfering with the collection and interpretation of study data (2) History of addiction (3) Allergy to study medication (4) Chronic intake of medication potentially interfering with pain processing (except oral contraceptives) (5) Intake of over-the-counter analgesics within the two days prior to study (6) Reynaud's disease (7) Pregnancy (8) Participation in other study within last 30 days (9) Personnel with direct access to addicting drugs