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WithdrawnNCT03035578Updated Feb 25, 2020

Development of a Morphine Pharmacokinetic and Pharmacodynamic Model for the Neonatal Population

A Phase 1/2 interventional study of Morphine and Morphine in Pain and Drug Effect, sponsored by The Hospital for Sick Children. Withdrawn. Open to participants aged 24 Weeks to 42 Weeks, including healthy volunteers. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2020-02-25.

Sponsored by The Hospital for Sick Children · Phase 1/2, Interventional, and Basic science

Why this study was withdrawn
research project has been abandoned primarily because of the excessive delays associated with past challenges in obtaining approval from Health Canada
Phase
Phase 1/2
Study type
Interventional
Enrollment
0
Allocation
Not applicable
Ages
24 Weeks to 42 Weeks
Sex
All
01

Study summary

This research aims to study what the baby's body does with morphine and how morphine works in the baby's body. One hundred newborn babies will be enrolled in this study. With a better understanding of the drug doctors and nurses will have more information and better administer the drug in case of pain, stress or discomfort.

Read the detailed description

Critically ill immature preterm infants experience multiple noxious stimuli while receiving care in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). These noxious stimuli include, but are not limited to: venipuncture; insertion of intravenous and arterial catheters; suctioning of the nose, mouth and oropharynx; endotracheal intubation for mechanical ventilation; insertion of chest drains; repositioning and other types of patient manipulation. The delivery of optimal doses of analgesics for these noxious stimuli is a major challenge due to the lack of knowledge about drug disposition and its effects in this patient population.

Morphine is the commonest analgesic used in the NICU. The Premature Infant Pain Profile (PIPP) is used to quantify pain in the NICU1. This objective score, which combines physiological and behavioural variables defining levels of discomfort, is used as a guide for the use of morphine in newborn infants. Multidimensional pain assessment tools, such as PIPP, can easily identify behaviour in healthy infants undergoing painful events, however, its efficiency is questionable when applicable to critically ill premature infants with neurological impairment, where the pain processing and modulation may be altered. Pharmacokinetics/Pharmacodynamics (PKPD) models can be used to quantitatively describe and predict drug disposition in the blood and the target organ (e.g., brain) in relation to doses and patient characteristics. Although there has been a global effort to describe morphine plasma levels in this population using a pharmacokinetic modelling approach2-5, PKPD model development has not been reported. The study of morphine pharmacokinetics to determine the optimal dose for balancing analgesia/sedation together with the design of pharmacodynamic model for morphine may provide a better understanding of nociception/pain profile based on the physiological variables of immature infants. Moreover, the PKPD model may be used to achieve optimal therapeutic effects through individualised model-based dose selection. Objective: This study is composed by four main objectives:

  1. First: Define target morphine plasma and brain concentrations. To this end, we will develop a morphine PKPD model based on population PK characteristics and morphine effects captured by functional readout of central nervous system function;
  2. Second: Develop an opportunistic sampling method for fragile populations based on saliva sampling;
  3. Third: Compare pharmacokinetic parameters calculated from saliva with plasma sample;
  4. Fourth: Application of the morphine PKPD model for prediction of optimal morphine dosing in individual patients using the Bayesian framework of model refinement.
02

Conditions studied

  • Pain
  • Drug Effect

Keywords

  • Pharmacokinetics
  • Pharmacodynamics
  • Morphine
  • Neonatal
03

In context

Lead sponsor

The Hospital for Sick Children is the lead sponsor of 568 studies on the registry; 81 are open to participants now.

Of its 7 completed or terminated interventional studies of FDA-regulated products, 0 (0%) have results posted.

Counted across the registry records on this site, refreshed daily.

04

Who can participate

Ages eligible
24 Weeks to 42 Weeks
Sexes eligible
All
Accepts healthy volunteers
Yes

Inclusion criteria

  • Gestational age > 24 completed weeks.
  • Clinically prescribed to commence a continuous morphine infusion.

Exclusion criteria

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Gestational age \< 24 completed weeks.
  • Critically ill infant unlikely to survive for more than 72 hours.
  • Prolonged fetal exposure to morphine, any other narcotic, or methadone, as a consequence of maternal use of the drug.
  • Any postnatal exposure to morphine during the 72 hours prior to the commencement of the second morphine infusion.
  • Neonates with impaired cardiac, hepatic or renal functioning as defined by clinical signs of impaired perfusion, abnormal liver function tests, or an elevated serum creatinine.
  • Neonates with seizures.
  • The attending neonatologist considers that participation in the study is contraindicated.
05

Study design

Phase
Phase 1 / Phase 2
Primary purpose
Basic science
Allocation
Not applicable
Intervention model
Single group
Masking
None (open label)
Enrollment
0 participants (actual)

Study arms

  • Experimental
    Morphine Blood and Saliva sampling

    The infants will receive a 50 mcg/kg loading dose of morphine followed by a constant infusion.Morphine Injection: 10mg/mL, 1mL ampoules.Two strengths of stock syringes: a)patients \<1.5kg, morphine 0.5mg/25mL; b)patients 1.5kg to \<5kg, morphine 1mg/25mL. Time blood samples will be collected for measurement of whole blood concentration of morphine in 24h. Total morphine, morphine-3-glucuronide and morphine-6-glucuronide concentrations; volume of blood required is 0.25 ml. Sparse sampling strategy will be used for those neonates \< 1250; total volume of blood required is 0.50 ml. Frequent sampling strategy will be used for those neonates ≥ 1250 gm; total volume of blood required is 0.50 ml.Saliva samples will be collected at 10 and 30 minutes and at 6, 12 and 24h after morphine infusion started.100 uL of saliva, captured using a collection swab.

    Drug: Morphine

Interventions

  • DrugMorphine

    Sampling blood for development of Morphine Pharmacokinetic/Pharmacodynamic Model for Neonatal Population

  • DrugMorphine

    Sampling saliva for development of Morphine Pharmacokinetic/Pharmacodynamic Model for Neonatal Population

06

What researchers measure

Primary outcomes

  1. Target Morphine Plasma Concentration

    Sparse sampling coupled with population (mixed effects) method will be used to design the morphine pharmacokinetics phase. This method captures pharmacokinetics data from many subjects (learning about population), which are based on a relatively few number of samples per patient (learning about individual characteristics considering the large number of samples).Population pharmacokinetic parameters will be estimated using a non-linear mixed effects modelling with NONMEM software.

    Time frame: 12 months (blood sampling and modeling)

Secondary outcomes

  1. Brain Morphine Concentrations

    The drug effect will be design using the sigmoid modelling. The effect of drugs modeled by relating drug effect to the drug concentration (obtain in the primary outcome). The pain scores and amplitude-integrated electroencephalography (aEEG) will be used as markers of drug effect on the central nervous system for the development of the pharmacodynamic model. The effect-site concentration will be validated by comparing the predicted time of peak effect with the time of peak effect of aEEG effect. Heart rate, respiratory rate, blood oxygen saturation, and blood pressure will be captured continuously through neonatal computational platform with the intent to investigate, other pharmacodynamic relationship using the sigmoid modelling.

    Time frame: 12 months (a-eeg collection and modeling)

07

Study locations

No study locations are listed for this record.

08

References and documents

Individual participant data

Plan to share: No

No publications or documents are linked to this record.

09

Updates

Tracking since Sep 25, 2026
No changes since tracking began. The registry record was last updated on Feb 25, 2020, before this site started recording changes on Sep 25, 2026. Its history is on ClinicalTrials.gov ↗
10

Registry details

Key details

Study ID
NCT03035578
Lead sponsor
The Hospital for Sick Children
Responsible party
Andrew James (Interim Head, Division of Neonatology, The Hospital for Sick Children) — Principal investigator
First posted
Jan 30, 2017
Start date
Dec 1, 2017 (estimated)
Primary completion
Jun 1, 2018 (estimated)
Completion
Jun 1, 2019 (estimated)
Last update
Feb 25, 2020

Oversight

Data monitoring committee
No
FDA-regulated drug
No
FDA-regulated device
No
View the source record on ClinicalTrials.gov ↗

Not currently enrolling

This study is withdrawn, as verified in Feb 2020. You cannot join it, but the record below documents what was studied.

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