I'm not sure if this is what you want to hear, and I'm also weary of writing this, as I'm sure there are people who feel it's working perfectly for them.

But.

1) On a personal level, I tried it 2 years ago. Lyrica was not on the list of accepted treatments for neuropathy over here, so the neurologist had to fill out forms to state that I had already unsuccessfully taken other anti-depressants (I was not suffering from depression) before I could get it.

Now for sure, a medicine that was that difficult to obtain, and so horribly expensive, raised the expectations. When I came out of the pharmacy, I could already feel the pain go away a bit!

Sadly, that was the only time it did something for me, and after a few months I stopped taking the pills.

2) My GP confirmed that most of her patients who were put on Lyrica weren't very positive about it, and she personally did not understand why it had become so popular.

3) I tend to believe Pfizer, the manufacturer, when they stated, last year, that Lyrica did not perform any better than placebo in their own trials.

To quote them verbatim: "Lyrica, when compared with a placebo, failed to meet the diabetes study's primary endpoint of a specified change in pain."

This means that it works about as well as sucking your thumb... Of course, this was only a trial with PN patients who were diabetic, but as the (pain) symptoms of PN often are very similar - no matter what caused it - I tend to read into this that it doesn't work for PN period.

This information is not new of course, and you may already have come across it, while reading this forum.

But, as they say, your mileage may vary, and I'm not an expert.