PULLMAN, Wash. — Could the botanical known as kratom safely help millions of people worldwide who suffer with chronic pain?
Researchers at Washington State University will lead a team pursuing an answer over the next five years, funded by a $7.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. Although kratom is widely marketed as a pain reliever and alternative to opioids, relatively little is known about its effects on human health. The project will investigate how kratom works, its risks, and its impact on sleep and quality of life for those suffering from chronic pain.
“A conservative estimate of the number of people in the world who suffer from chronic pain is roughly 20%,” said Mary Paine, a professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences in WSU’s College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences who will lead the project. “That translates to over 1.6 billion people in the world. In the U.S., it’s about 60 million people. And there’s a vicious cycle between chronic pain and a cascade of negative effects, including poor sleep, anxiety, reduced quality of life and other problems. That’s why it’s important to do this work — it could potentially help tens of millions of people in this country and billions of people worldwide.”
Kratom is a botanical that comes from the leaves of a southeast Asian evergreen tree. It is not approved by the FDA for any medical use. Sold as an energy booster and pain reliever, it is sometimes touted as an alternative to opioids or a treatment for opioid withdrawal.
“If you take kratom at lower doses, it acts like a stimulant, but at higher doses, it acts like an opioid,” Paine said.
Kratom comes with overdose and addiction risks of its own. Several states and cities have banned it, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warns consumers against kratom products on the market. But there is little research into the botanical, and it may offer positive benefits for chronic pain and its cascading negative effects.
“I understand that the reason for banning it is to prevent harm to people, and I’m all for it not being sold to children or teenagers, not unlike alcohol and cannabis,” Paine said. “But the science has lagged behind and some decisions are being made without having concrete, definitive scientific evidence.”
Paine will lead the Botanical Dietary Supplements Translational Research Team, which will bring together researchers from WSU’s colleges of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Medicine, and Nursing, as well as the University of Arizona and the University of North Carolina Greensboro.
Natural products chemists in North Carolina will select and authenticate a pure form of kratom, without the additives and compounds often added to products sold on the market; scientists at Arizona and WSU will conduct studies in mouse models; then Paine’s group and colleagues in the WSU Sleep and Performance Center plan to conduct a sleep study on humans with chronic low back pain.
“This is a beautiful example of an interprofessional collaboration at WSU,” Paine said.
Results of the project will generate critical data to inform the design of future full-scale clinical efficacy trials of kratom.
