Pharmacotherapies for opioid addiction under active development in the US include lofexidine (primarily for managing withdrawal symptoms) and Probuphine®, a distinctive mode of delivering buprenorphine for six months, thus relieving patients, clinicians, and regulatory personnel from most concerns about diversion, misuse, and unintended exposure in children. In addition, two recently approved f...

Breakthrough pain is a newly recognized pain category that was first described by Portenoy and Hagen in 1990. The term describes pain that increases in intensity to "break through" chronic pain that is being controlled by a scheduled opioid regimen. The development of fluctuations in pain intensity is challenging due to their unpredictable nature, rapid onset, and need for rapid treatment inter...

STUDY OBJECTIVE To evaluate next-morning driving performance after middle-of-the-night use of zolpidem 3.5 mg in a buffered sublingual formulation (ZST). DESIGN Single-center, four-period, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study. SETTING Maastricht University, The Netherlands. PARTICIPANTS Forty healthy volunteers (20 females). INTERVENTIONS Single dose of ZST admi...

We describe a sensitive and specific method for the measurement of buprenorphine in human plasma. The method involves a structural analog as an internal calibrator, careful control of pH during sample extraction to maximize drug recovery, and back-extraction into acid followed by reextraction to eliminate endogenous interferences. After evaporation, sample residues are derivatized with heptaflu...

According to a Medical Letter review of the recently approved atypical antipsychotic asenapine (Saphris), "available data on its efficacy are not impressive." Asenapine is formulated in a sublingual tablet and is approved for acute schizophrenia and manic or mixed bipolar episodes. Its receptor affinity profile is similar to other atypicals. Three placebo-controlled trials have been conducted i...

Sildenafilcitrate (SILD) orodispersable sublingual tablets (ODSTs) have been developed using two comparative techniques for improving their oral disintegration, dissolution and bioavailability in order to manage acute attacks of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). The techniques employed were direct compression of SILD-poloxamer 188 solid dispersions (SDs) and freeze drying using various exc...

Background: We sought to compare the effectiveness and safety of sublingual versus vaginal misoprostol for the termination of pregnancy with a live full-term fetus.Methods: This randomized, triple-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial was performed on 200 primiparous women with normal, singleton, full-term pregnancies candidated for the induction of labor. Sublingual and vaginal tablets cont...

PURPOSE OF REVIEW Sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT) is indicated for the use in pediatric patients suffering from allergic rhinitis or allergic rhinoconjunctivitis caused by environmental allergens, such as ragweed pollen, grass pollen, and dust mite. This review focuses on recent and relevant studies associated with the use of SLIT for these allergens in children by examining efficacy, safety, a...

In its century-long history, allergen immunotherapy (AIT), has shown continuous evolution in terms of the materials and the treatment schedules used, the adequate duration, and the mechanisms of action underlying its clinical efficacy. The passage from the empirical phase of AIT to the era of evidence-based medicine (EBM) was associated with achievement of the highest levels of evidence. This r...