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Review
. 2022 Feb 17:15:479-496.
doi: 10.2147/JPR.S334840. eCollection 2022.

Study Design Characteristics and Endpoints for Enriched Enrollment Randomized Withdrawal Trials for Chronic Pain Patients: A Systematic Review

David J Kopsky  1   2   3 , Karolina M Szadek  1 , Patrick Schober  1 , Alexander F J E Vrancken  3 , Monique A H Steegers  1
Affiliations
Review

Study Design Characteristics and Endpoints for Enriched Enrollment Randomized Withdrawal Trials for Chronic Pain Patients: A Systematic Review

David J Kopsky et al. J Pain Res. .

Abstract

Enriched enrollment randomized withdrawal (EERW) pain trials are designed to include only responders with considerable pain relief without unacceptable side effects into the randomized phase. There are no recommendations for primary endpoints in such trials. Our objective was to propose recommendations based on assessment of trial characteristics, endpoints and effect sizes in EERW pain trials. We conducted a systematic review by searching electronic databases up to June 2020 for EERW trials comparing an analgesic with a placebo in adults suffering from chronic pain. A total of 28 trials met our criteria, involving 13662 patients in the open or single-blind phase and 7937 patients in the double-blind phase. As primary endpoint 18 trials used pain intensity measured with the visual analogue scale (VAS) or the 11-point numerical rating scale (NRS); 1 trial used a 4-point NRS. Loss of therapeutic response (LTR) was used in 1 trial and time to LTR was used in 8 trials as primary endpoint. Definitions of time to LTR differed considerably between trials. Only 2 out of 8 trials using time to LTR as primary endpoint reported the percentage of patients experiencing a minimum pain relief of 50%, compared to 14 out of 18 trials using NRS or VAS. Due to the complexity and diversity of time to LTR in EERW pain trials, we propose to use the NRS as primary endpoint with conservative imputation methods, and to use time to LTR as secondary endpoint.

Keywords: EERW trials; analgesics; endpoints; pain; systematic review.

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Conflict of interest statement

David J Kopsky reports pending patents “Topical phenytoin for use in the treatment of peripheral neuropathic pain (WO2018106107)” and “Topical pharmaceutical composition containing phenytoin and a (co-)analgesic for the treatment of chronic pain (WO2018106108)”. This systematic review is outside the scope of these patent applications. Maybe in the future a topical might be evaluated by an EERW trial. The authors have no other conflicts of interest related to this work.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Design of enrichment enrolment withdrawal trials.
Figure 2
Figure 2
PRISMA flow diagram.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Risk of bias summary.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Funnel plot of effect sizes.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Relation between double-blind baseline NRS and absolute effect size.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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