Tests for Abuse Liability

TESTING DRUGS FOR PHYSICAL DEPENDENCE POTENTIAL AND ABUSE LIABILITY. Joseph V. Brady, Ph.D., and Scott E. Lukas, Ph.D., eds. 

It is appropriate to recognize that some medications are more susceptible to abuse than others. If two medications are equally effective for a given indication, the one with lower abuse liability would obviously be preferred. Information on abuse liability is necessary for the appropriate regulation of medications and provides a basis for education of physicians, patients, and the public. In this chapter we describe the control of marketed medications, abuse-liability assessment procedures for premarketing testing in laboratory animals and humans, considerations of the formulation properties, and postmarketing surveillance of abuse. Finally, we provide three case studies of marketed medications that have been abused. 

Brady, J.V. and Lukas, S.E., Testing Drugs for Physical Dependence Potential and Abuse Liability. NIDA Research Monograph 52, 1984. 

The principal weakness of drug discrimination procedures for assessing abuse liability is that they provide only indirect evidence regarding abuse. If a test substance is discriminated as being similar to a known drug of abuse, this is taken to indicate that the test substance is likely to be abused in a similar manner. On the other hand, if a test substance does not share discriminative stimulus effects with any known drug of abuse, drug discrimination procedures alone provide no indication of whether the test substance is likely to be abused. 

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