Attention and Memory Disorders Related to Acute Morphine — MEMOMORPH  

Memory Disorders Clinical Trial

Official title: Attention and Memory Disorders Related to Acute Morphine

Status Not yet recruiting

Clinical Trial Summary

The aim of the study is to determine if there are attention disorders related to acute morphine use in single-traumatized patients and after that the investigators will determine whether there are immediate memory problems associated with acute morphine withdrawal in single-traumatized patients.

From a biochemical point of view, the analgesic effects of morphine and the central side effects appear to be two different dimensions of the action of morphine, each related to a metabolite. Regarding acute attention, it is difficult to differentiate attention deficit disorder due to pain or due to morphine.

Two tests have been validated in the literature to evaluate attention and memory: the 15 words of Rey and the Stroop Color Word test. The investigators will use these two tests in this study.

Clinical Trial Description

Morphine is a powerful analgesic used in chronic non-neuropathic cancerous (Walsh) and non-cancerous (Zenz et al) pain and for the relief of acute trauma pain, for example.

It is know that morphine as well as pain can cause cognitive disorders but the pain seems to slow down the reaction time whereas morphine has an action on the long-term memory (Lorenz J et al). According to an experimental study on rats, low dose morphine (equivalent to that present in the human brain) does not cause long-term memory problems, as opposed to a higher dose. In healthy volunteers, a single dose of morphine gives little cognitive and psychomotor dysfunction (Hank et al). After 12 months of taking oral morphine, no cognitive dysfunction is detected, with even some improvement for some functions related to stopping pain. More recently, it has been shown that long-term morphine use causes spatial memory disturbances and that these are probably due to extracellular adenosine accumulation.

This work suggests that acute morphine could lead to memory and attention disorders. This would therefore result in intrinsic impairment of the cognitive abilities of the patient and thus an alteration of his understanding in the explanations given concerning a possible surgical intervention, the risks and benefits of it.

The purpose of the study is to assess the patient's attention and memory skills after acute morphine use. In order to know their initial capacities, the tests are also done remotely outside the influence of the analgesic drugs given to the emergency services. The two practical tests, the Stroop Color Word Test and Rey's 15-word test, are easily performed tests in an emergency context and validated in the literature. ;

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Disease
• Memory Disorders

• NCT number: NCT03507985
• Study type: Observational
• Source: University Hospital, Toulouse
• Contact: Vincent Bounes, MD
• Phone: 05 67 69 16 76
• Email: bounes.v@chu-toulouse.fr
• Status: Not yet recruiting
• Start date: September 2018
• Completion date: November 2019