Tapentadol extended-release: a recent addition to our analgesic armamentarium.

SUMMARY In the never-ending process of providing therapy with diminishing side effects, pain medicine stands out as an important area of work. Ever since the introduction of opioids and elucidation of their mechanisms pharmaceutical researchers have sought a compound that provides long-term analgesia with none of the side effects that include somnolence, lethargy, tolerance, addiction, gastrointestinal symptoms and so on. This article reviews one of the latest improvements in analgesia, the formulation of tapentadol as an extended-release medication. Despite not claiming to have eliminated all the negatives of narcotics tapentadol extended-release seems to have made inroads to that goal.