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This article is one in a series on Medications for Pain… What are your choices? How do various medications work? What are the pros and cons? How about side effects? (Discuss these ideas with your doctor. Don’t make any changes to your treatment by yourself.)
Today is the last article in this series, and we’ll look at The Most Promising Research-Study Advance.
As you might know all too well, it’s usually not a single medication alone which helps in chronic pain. Often patients use 2, 3, or even more medications together. However, most research studies look at only 1 medication at a time. While this makes studies simpler to conduct and the results easier to interpret, it doesn’t give us the best knowledge of how to combine medications for pain management.
Multiple-Medications Studies
What I’m starting to see in medical journals is medication studies looking at more than 1 medication at a time. Yeah!! Here’s an example:
Lamotrigine in Combination with Other Medications for Neuropathic Pain (citation below). This study looked at adding lamotrigine (an anti-seizure medication) to either Neurontin, a tricycle antidepressant, or another non-narcotic medication, in patients whose pain wasn’t well controlled with only 1 medication. The results showed that the addition of Lamotrigine didn’t help with pain.
This is a real-world scenario, and the result is helpful to doctors to plan what to do in the all-too-common situation of 1 medication not helping enough.
As more studies are done, we’ll know better:
- what drugs to use together
- in what order to prescribe them
- what dosages to use together
This will be great for the advancement of pain management!
Study is: Silver M, Blum D, Grainger J, Hammer A, Quessy S, “Double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of lamotrigine in combination with other medications for neuropathic pain.” Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, Vol 34, 2007, 446-454.
Other articles in this series:
- Medication 101: What Are My Options For Pain Treatment
- NSAIDS: Aspirin, Motrin, Celebrex
- Anticonvulsants
- Antidepressants
- Anesthetics
- Ketamine
- Muscle Relaxants
- Blood Pressure Medication
- Anti-Psychotics
- Narcotics / Opiates
- Medication Advances Coming Soon
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4 responses so far ↓
jeisea // Dec 18, 2007 at 1:54 pm
This comment was meant for here. I will liunk to this page.
This is a great article. I’ll add it to my blog post about your website in the section about medications. Being informed is being empowered with the knowledge to help us to make decisions for ourselves.
Anon reader // Dec 26, 2007 at 9:35 pm
I was recently in the hospital and was given 200 mg Darvocet and 15 mg Dilaudid for pain. It worked very well. It was the first time I had ever been given two painkillers at one time.
Susan // Dec 31, 2007 at 3:38 pm
Here Neurontin is identified as a tricyclic antidepressant, but you list it under anticonvulsants. Which is it?
How to Cope with Pain // Dec 31, 2007 at 4:08 pm
Neurontin is an anticonvulsant. I think the abstract for the research study meant adding lamotrigine to one of 3 conditions, 1) Neurontin, 2) a tricycle antidepressant, or 3) another non-narcotic medication. Hope that clarifies it.
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