Double Bedtime Dosing During Immediate-release Morphine Administration to Cancer Patients

Summary

This is a double -blind randomized crossover study to provide evidence for the expert advice based recommendation of the Expert Working Group of the European Association for Palliative Care (EAPC) that patients during treatment with IR morphine are given a double dose at bed-time that replaces the next 4-hourly dose during night. In addition to the primary, blinded clinical part of the study, an experimental part is also included. This part consists of two open study days were morphine IR is given in the same fashion as the clinical study. The aim is to study whether pharmacokinetic data supports the clinical data. The use of a double-bedtime IR morphine dose is equal to regularly scheduled IR morphine every 4-hour during night in respect to pain relief during night for patients with pain caused by malignant disease

Timeline

Start

2002-04

Primary completion

2006-11

Completion

2008-02

Publications

• Results Dale O, Piribauer M, Kaasa S, Moksnes K, Knobel H, Klepstad P. A double-blind, randomized, crossover comparison between single-dose and double-dose immediate-release oral morphine at bedtime in cancer patients. J Pain Symptom Manage. 2009 Jan;37(1):68-76. doi: 10.1016/j.jpainsymman.2007.12.016. Epub 2008 May 27.

Drugs

Indications