Home › Opioid Overdose › NCT07693270

Identifying Biomarkers Related to Opioid Use and Pain Response Following Traumatic Injury and Surgery

Who can join

Ages 18 and older · All sexes

Inclusion Criteria:

* Patients 18 years of age or older
* Patients admitted for traumatic injury at Hillcrest or Jacobs Medical Center or patients who will undergo the orthopedic (e.g., joint, spine), abdominal, breast, vascular (e.g., amputation), or thoracic surgery.

Exclusion Criteria:

* Patients with a prior history of opioid use disorder or dependence
* Pregnant women
* Prisoners
* Patients with an inability to independently provide informed consent to participate in the study due to lack of capacity. This lack of capacity can be from either a chronic/continuous condition (i.e. dementia), or can be temporary (i.e. clear signs of intoxication at the time of the visit (not alert or oriented, slurring words \[and confirmed not to be baseline\], unsteady gait \[and confirmed not to be baseline\], or appears impaired based on clinical judgement by PI/Co-I)).

About the study

The mechanisms leading to opioid tolerance or dependence are not well understood and there are currently no biomarkers for predicting who is at risk for development of OUD. The purpose of this project is to support the feasibility of detecting a miRNA bio-behavioral signature of opioid misuse risk that will demonstrate improved predictive precision compared to current tools such as polygenic risk scores (PRS). Specifically, the study will address key goals of the Wellcome Leap program to develop scalable measures assessing individual addiction susceptibility and quantifying addiction risk and progression during prescription drug use. The study will utilize behavioral, genomics, and bioinformatics pipelines to characterize opioid-induced miRNA expression dynamics among trauma and surgical patients prescribed opioids at discharge. Based on results from this study, the research will develop a high-throughput screening assay to predict risk for opioid use disorder (OUD). The hypothesis is that miRNAs will serve as powerful bio-signatures for predicting long-term clinical outcomes in patients treated with opioids for pain management following trauma injury and/or surgery.

Sponsor: University of California, San Diego · Participants: 100 · Started: Jul 15, 2026

Contact the study team

• Rodney A Gabriel · Phone: 858-663-7747

Official record on ClinicalTrials.gov — NCT07693270

Locations in the U.S.

Conditions

• Opioid Overdose
• Pain After Surgery

From ClinicalTrials.gov, data retrieved Sep 30, 2026. Each study sets its own eligibility; the study team decides who can join.