It was a revolutionary new medical test. I fear getting going down that path. Only on 2, the opioid test. Could it keep you from becoming addicted to painkillers? The answer to whether you may become an addict could be in your genes. That’s the idea behind a new Southern California medical curb the opioid epidemic. Andrea Fujii has the story you’ll see only on 2. [inaudible]
Sue Henriques is her mom’s caregiver. [inaudible] The 62-year-old suffers from chronic pain and has been on high doses of prescription painkillers like oxycodone for years. Addicted, and she needs it. Without any pain medication the woman would be literally on the floor. Sue says she too lives with debilitating pain from migraines and a back injury, but she’s worried she’ll become an opioid addict just like her mom.
Sometimes I have had chronic pain and won’t take medication just because I fear getting going down that path.
Are you Sue’s doctor? Marina del Rey surgeon Hooman Melamed says he often sees patients who are over-prescribed opioids.
If you or I were to take one of the amount that they’re on per day, I mean, you and I would like literally to die.
So Doctor Melamed and about 300 other doctors around the country now offer Proove, a genetic test that promises to determine a patient’s risk for addiction.
You could be upping all these medications, but their genetic profile may not be allowing them to respond to this medication appropriately.
Sue jumped at the chance to take the Proove test.
The test is relatively simple. The patient fills out a questionnaire and is swabbed for DNA, and within a couple of weeks they have the results.
This is cell phone video of Sue getting swabbed, and days later her results.
You’re a moderate risk for opiates, actually.
But the tests also showed she has low pain tolerance.
You’re gonna need more, and you already had a high risk to begin with, so which means you can go down the wrong pathway very quickly.
She also learned what medications won’t work, some that she’s already been prescribed.
The largest and most expensive health condition is pain.
Proove creator and CEO Brian Meshkin says to curb the opioid epidemic, patients must know what drugs will work and their probability of becoming an addict.
We can imagine a day where a doctor will prescribe a medication actually knowing whether a patient’s going to respond or not, rather than just guessing.
Proove is based in Irvine, and the one-of-a-kind test has been out for a year. [inaudible] so far is about 90 percent. Based on Sue’s results, she and Doctor Melamed will design her best course of treatment. But now, armed with his information, she says she’s hopeful she won’t have the same fate as her mother.
[inaudible] In Marina del Rey, Andrea Fujii, CBS2 News.
