Study Supports Oral Ketamine Formulation as Potential Treatment for Acute Pain

Specialty pharmaceutical company Vitalis Analgesics has published a randomized, controlled trial demonstrating the effectiveness of its proprietary VTS aspirin/ketamine formulation, known as VTS-85, as a potential oral treatment for acute pain that produces analgesia similar to intravenous ketamine, but with a longer effect and lower side effects.

Findings from the study were published online in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine.

The study included 60 emergency department patients who presented with severe acute musculoskeletal pain. The patients were divided into 30-person groups that received either aspirin and ketamine designed to be fully swallowed or a proprietary ketamine alone designed to be swished and swallowed.

While both treatment options were found to produce analgesia with a peak and length better than has been reported in literature for oral ketamine for pain, the swallowed aspirin and ketamine arm had a mean reduction in patient-reported pain scores of 2.1 points and the propriety ketamine-only arm had a reduction of 4.1 points. The pain reduction produced by the ketamine-only intervention was comparable to that achieved with a combination of aspirin and a proprietary ketamine release profile reported in a similar open-label pilot study.

“The proprietary release formulations resembling VTS-85 demonstrated surprisingly strong pain reduction given the known poor bioavailability of oral ketamine,” study principal investigator Sergey Motov, MD, Maimonides Health, Brooklyn, New York, said in a news release. “Based on the data observed to date, we believe that VTS -85 has the potential to be a useful for a wide range of acute painful conditions including acute post-operative pain.”

References

Gerges L, Fassassi C, Barberan C, et al. Oral Aspirin/ketamine versus oral ketamine for emergency department patients with acute musculoskeletal pain. Am J Emerg Med. 2022;58:298-304. doi:10.1016/j.ajem.2022.05.026

Randomized controlled study supports vitalis analgesic’s oral ketamine as a potential treatment of acute pain. News release. Vitalis Analgesics. June 29, 2022. Accessed Aug. 23, 2022.

Davis A, Fassassi C, Dove D, et al. Analgesic efficacy of oral aspirin/ketamine combination for management of acute musculoskeletal pain in the emergency department - a proof of concept pilot study. J Emerg Med. 2022;62(6):750-759. doi:10.1016/j.jemermed.