Nutriband Announces Data Supporting Need for Safer Abuse-Deterrent Transdermal Patches Presented at 2024 American Academy of Pain Medicine Annual Meeting - Seite 2

Transdermal patches are designed to provide an alternative route of administration for opioid or stimulant drugs that are prescribed for treatment of conditions such as chronic pain, opioid use disorder or attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Although transdermal versions offer improved pharmacokinetic delivery as well as patient convenience with wear times of up to 7 days, they contain an increased drug payload which can often be a target for recreational drug abusers or subject to accidental pediatric exposure, particularly with infants and toddlers. Abuse of opioids, and in particular fentanyl abuse and overdose, continues to be an epidemic which can lead to the abuse of prescription transdermal fentanyl and other opioid containing transdermal products.

According to the FDA¹, accidental exposure to medication is a leading cause of poisoning in children. Young children, in particular, have died or become seriously ill after being exposed to a skin patch containing fentanyl, a powerful opioid pain reliever. Children can overdose on new and used fentanyl patches by putting them in their mouth or sticking the patches on their skin. This can cause death by slowing the child's breathing and decreasing the levels of oxygen in their blood.

Nutriband abuse-deterrent transdermal technology consists of a proprietary aversive agent coating that employs taste aversion to deter the oral abuse of and accidental exposure to transdermal opioid and stimulant patch products. Preliminary studies have shown that the coating is very difficult to scrape off and the technology has a patented immediate and extended-release profile which presents an additional layer of deterrence to prevent the aversive layer from easily being washed off in an attempt to separate the drug from the aversive agents.

The company engaged Rocky Mountain Poison & Drug Safety (RMPDS), a division of Denver Health and Hospital Authority, Denver, Colorado to determine the incidence of abuse and accidental pediatric exposure of transdermal patches containing drugs of abuse in the United States based on poison center data for the surveillance period 2018-2022. RMPDS utilized the Researched Abuse, Diversion and Addiction-Related Surveillance (RADARS) System, a surveillance system that collects real-world safety and effectiveness data about prescription drugs (https://www.radars.org/).