Recruiting and retaining adequate numbers of patients, critical to the success of any clinical trial, is especially challenging in opioid trials.

We’ve identified seven things to consider, including:

• The elephant in the room. In view of the opioid abuse epidemic, you must guard against abuse and drug diversion. Proper screening protocols are essential.
• Those difficult realities. Some aspects of analgesic trial design may turn patients away. These include daily pain diaries, the possibility of joining the placebo group, and washout requirements for current medications.
• Risk of screening failure. Normal waxing and waning of symptoms and the natural tendency of pain to improve over time can lead to high initial screening failure rates.

There’s much more — such as the potential impact of comorbid psychiatric conditions that arise often in chronic pain populations — so check out Seven Things to Know About Recruiting Patients for Opioid Trials.