Tapentadol Abuse Potential: A Post-Marketing Evaluation Using a Sample of Individuals Evaluated for Substance Abuse Treatment

Objective: Abuse of prescription opioid pain relievers continues to be a serious public health concern. In contrast to opioids such as oxycodone or morphine, tapentadol, a prescription analgesic, has two mechanisms of action: μ-opioid receptor agonism and norepinephrine reuptake inhibition. As a result of differences in its receptor pharmacology, there may be differences in its abuse profile. As an initial step toward testing this hypothesis, we present a postmarketing examination of tapentadol's abuse liability relative to comparators. Methods: A sentinel sample of 113,914 individuals assessed for substance abuse treatment as part of the NAVIPPRO ASI-MV ® surveillance system at 624 facilities in 38 states from January 2011 to September 2012 was examined for prevalence and prescription-adjusted prevalence of past 30-day abuse of tapentadol as a compound and its immediate-release (IR) and extended-release (ER) formulations with oxymorphone, hydromorphone, hydrocodone, morphine, fentanyl, oxycodone, tramadol, and buprenorphine as comparators. Results: Tapentadol abuse was reported significantly less often (P