Study at KGH finds better solution to Chronic Pain
People who suffer from debilitating neuropathic pain may get more relief and sleep better by combining two commonly-prescribed drugs, says Kingston General Hospital anesthesiologist Dr. Ian Gilron.
A new, federally-funded study by Queen’s University researchers has found that taking the drugs together is a more effective treatment than taking them individually.
When given both an anti-seizure drug (gabapentin) and an antidepressant (nortriptyline), patients suffering from neuropathic pain caused by nerve damage or disease experienced less pain than when they took one or the other individually, reports Ian, who is also director of Clinical Pain Research for Queen’s Department of Anesthesiology.
“It was also exciting to discover the effect of this combination on sleep interference,” adds Ian, noting that people rated sleep interference with the combined drugs as 1.0 on a scale of 10, compared to 2.2 when they took each drug individually.
“That’s a very important issue for this group of patients, whose debilitating, unrelenting pain often interferes with normal sleep.”
This is the first time Ian has been able to find a drug combination that also helps patients sleep better. An earlier trial investigated the effects of combining morphine – the other type of commonly prescribed drug for neuropathic pain – with the anti-seizure drug gabapentin. The patients’ pain lessened significantly, but they still had as much trouble sleeping.
Ian says it’s important to understand how drugs interact, since 45 per cent of Canadians being treated for neuropathic pain take two or more pain drugs.
There may also be safety issues.
“We need more evidence from carefully conducted trials in support of each particular combination, and let the doctors and patients know about such results,” Ian stresses.
While this research focuses on two specific types of neuropathic pain – diabetic neuropathy and postherpetic neuralgia – the methodology could also be applied to the study of other chronic conditions such as cancer-related pain, spinal disk disease, and the pain experienced after chemotherapy and mastectomies, Ian says.
Results of the study, funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), were recently published in the international health journal The Lancet.
“This is a very interesting and important result,” says Dr. Jane Aubin, Scientific Director of CIHR’s Institute of Musculoskeletal Health and Arthritis.
“Many chronic pain sufferers don’t sleep well, and they get caught in a vicious cycle in which less sleep equals more pain. Dr. Gilron’s work offers new hope to Canadians desperate to put an end to this debilitating situation.”
Also on the Queen’s team are researchers Joan Bailey (anesthesiology), Dongsheng Tu (mathematics and Statistics), Ronald Holden (psychology,) Robyn Houlden (medicine).
