http://health.yahoo.net/news/s/nm/pf...o-pain-studies

This was posted in the RSD forum. Seems pertinent here too.

This is really fascinating. I have been wondering about the huge marketing campaign for Lyrica aimed at Fibromyalgia patients, especially since Fibro is such a "soft" diagnosis, without a definitive test or cause. I am not implying that it isn't real, only that I don't know how you market a medication specifically for such a mysterious condition.
I know that a lot of neuropathy patients get moved from Neurontin to Lyrica. Since they are related, does this say anything about the effectiveness of Gabapentin? I definitely notice an increase in burning and zaps if I forget my bedtime pill, so I assume it does something.
With my new symptoms of burning over most of my body I was wondering if it was time to increase my dosage of 1800mg per day.

This post has information on both gabapentin and Lyrica:

http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/post829091-8.html

Recent metastudies have shown only about 30% of patients
see any effectiveness with gabapentin.

I'll be putting the Lyrica studies up there on that post soon.

While looking for other news articles about this topic I found THIS:
http://www.wellnessresources.com/stu...rain_synapses/

Still we do not know to what extent this is going to affect adults using these drugs...but it is still something to think about, carefully.

... I did have some pain relief using Lyrica for my Small Fiber Neuropathy.

Cymbalta, though, has always been the magic bullet for me when I get flairs, with about 75% overall pain relief after being on it 60 mg for several weeks.

What is really interesting, though, is that the pain tends to stay away for some period of time AFTER I discontinue each course of Cymbalta.

For example, I had a big flair in SFN in my palms and even the soles of my feet this past winter. I was then on Cymbalta full strength for five weeks, and completely discontinued it on March 5th.

I was then relatively pain-free until my current fair which began April 18th.

For what it is worth ....

David

Drugs like Cymbalta work by altering the actions of neurotransmitters at the synapses in the brain. I think it takes a short while to become effective, and will also take a while to
revert to previous actions. We still do not understand all the actions in the brain well, and these drugs really precede total understanding.

Mrs. D says (re her link to the article on Lyrica/Neurontin and brain synapses):

Still we do not know to what extent this is going to affect adults using these drugs...but it is still something to think about, carefully.[/QUOTE]

That would certainly help explain some major brain lapses in recent months. Among us (ahem) senior folk, forgetting things or, as my brother-in-law says, "losing the plot," is scary and the first thought (or fear) is incipient Alzheimers. Not exactly encouraging. However, I've been on Lyrica for about six years now. Tried to wean myself off it at one point (very very slowly) and found myself too tired to get upstairs so went back -- to Neurontin first. Then, when the dose of Neurontin was at the max, I switched back to Lyrica. Now I'm wondering if my exhaustion was from some other cause (the relief, I have to say, was instantaneous -- placebo effect?) and I simply attributed it to the wrong thing. Anyone else have any experience with this? I'm not beyond believing that the drug companies plot to get one hooked . . .

Marcia

People really respond uniquely to both these drugs. What helps one, may not help another.

If you search Lyrica in the search function, you'll find many discussions about it. We do have some members who have used it successfully and others who didn't like it.

Given the huge number of causes of neuropathies and neuropathic pain, this actually doesn't sound all that bad. Do you have figures for single supplements and opioids? I know from reading NT and elsewhere that they don't work for everyone either, but I couldn't cite numbers.

Doc

We can only post here what has been published. And the 30% figure is a new statistic from a large metastudy of previous gabapentin studies.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21412914

There are many studies on PubMed showing lipoic acid, benfotiamine, B12, acetyl carnitine, etc have reduced PN symptoms in those studies. But I have not seen metastudies collecting them all yet. Some of those studies go back over 10 yrs, and many started in Europe or other countries.