Robert Dworkin, PhD

Pain Treatment Research

Dr. Dworkin’s major research interests are (1) methodologic aspects of analgesic clinical trials and (2) treatment and prevention of chronic and acute neuropathic and musculoskeletal pain. The primary focus of his current research involves the identification of factors that increase the assay sensitivity of randomized clinical trials to detect differences between an efficacious treatment and a placebo control or comparison intervention. Ongoing studies are evaluating research designs and methods, clinical outcome assessments, statistical analyses, and benefit-risk evaluations used in randomized clinical trials and in studies with real-world data. This research and other efforts to improve the efficiency and informativeness of clinical trials of analgesic, anesthetic, and addiction interventions are being conducted under the auspices of the Analgesic, Anesthetic, and Addiction Clinical Trial Translations, Innovations, Opportunities, and Networks, and Pediatric Anesthesia Safety Initiative (ACTTION/PASI) public-private partnership with the FDA, of which he serves as Director.

For many years, Dr. Dworkin has also been very interested in identifying risk factors for the transition from acute to chronic pain and in evaluating interventions that have the potential to prevent chronic pain. One of the major results has been that patients with greater acute pain are more likely to develop chronic pain. This suggests that attenuating acute pain might prevent the development of chronic pain, and designing and conducting studies to test this hypothesis has been another focus of his efforts.

Finally, for the past several years, Dr. Dworkin has been very interested in the design of randomized clinical trials of "classic psychedelics," including psilocybin and LSD. Psychedelics have shown promise in the treatment of various psychiatric disorders and chronic pain conditions; given the modest efficacy and problematic tolerability of existing treatments, psychedelics have the potential to improve the well-being of large numbers of patients around the world if clinical trials confirm their efficacy and safety