Non-Opioid Pain Relief? Just Approved!

Conolidine is, as I understand it, a newly approved pain medication that is not opioid, has a history of efficacy, no side effects including no addictive qualities or adverse reactions as best I can tell. I do not know everyone’s pain status, but I would like people to have relief if it is needed!

Conolidine article from NIH (National Institute of Health) full text HERE, and below excerpted from full text:

2.2. Conolidine

Conolidine has unique qualities that can be beneficial for the management of chronic pain. Conolidine is found in the bark of the flowering shrub T. divaricata, otherwise known as the pinwheel flower or crepe jasmine, and is used in traditional Chinese, Ayurvedic, and Thai medicine to treat pain and fever (57). The compound makes up .00014% of T. divaricata bark. Tabernaemontana divaricatea contains several alkaloid compounds with a carbon-based framework resembling opioids (57). It is plausible that conolidine induced analgesia may lack complications associated with classic opioid medications (58). It is now being investigated for its effects on the atypical chemokine receptor (ACK3), an opioid scavenger of the dynorphin, enkephalin, and nociceptin families (59, 60). The ACK3 receptor has been found to regulate the availability of these opiates to classical opiate receptors. It is found in high concentrations in several important opiate-related centers of the brain (59). It was demonstrated that this novel receptor does not trigger the G protein cascade signaling pathway, and peptides specific to this receptor block the down regulatory effect it has on endogenous opiate levels, resulting in increased availability of opiate peptides for other classical opioid receptors (58). Modulation of this receptor has been postulated as an alternative opiate system target, and evaluations by Szpakowska et al. found it to be highly responsive to conolidine (58). Conolidine is a potent non-opioid analgesic and has been found to lack the typical complications associated with opiate analgesics like nausea, vomiting, respiratory depression, constipation, tolerance, and physical dependence (60).