Gabapentin

THURSDAY, Jan. 9, 2025 -- A pain-relieving medication might be safer for seniors than first thought. A new study published Jan. 7 in the Annals of Internal Medicine says Gabapentin is widely used to help treat chronic pain and nerve pain, particularly as an alternative to opioid painkillers. However, some have argued that gabapentin shouldn’t be prescribed to seniors, as it might increase their risk of damaging falls . Those concerns are baseless, according to the study. The study’s results show that gabapentin “was associated with fewer fall-related health care visits and … was not associated with an increase in more severe fall-related events,” concluded a research team led by Dr. Alexander Chaitoff , an assistant professor of internal medicine with the University of Michigan. “These considerations should be incorporated into conversations with patients who are considering starting gabapentin treatment,” the team added. Nearly 50 million prescriptions for gabapentin were written in 2020, but by 2022 those scripts had fallen by 20% after several studies found that the drug might increase fall risk for seniors. Chaitoff and his colleagues suspected that this risk might be overblown, given that the painful conditions for which gabapentin is prescribed also increases risk of falls. “Neuropathy, the most common indication for which gabapentin is prescribed, is also a known contributor to adverse health events, especially falls,” the researchers noted. The researchers decided to compare the safety of gabapentin against that of duloxetine , another drug prescribed for nerve pain that doesn’t have the same reputation for increasing fall risk. The team gathered data for more than 57,000 seniors 65 or older prescribed either gabapentin or duloxetine between Jan. 2014 and Dec. 2021 for nerve pain related to diabetes , shingles or fibromyalgia. The results showed that gabapentin users actually had a 48% lower overall risk of any falls, compared to those taking duloxetine. However, there was no difference between the two drugs when it came to the risk of experiencing a severe fall. “Although we cannot claim that gabapentin does not lead to higher risk for falls at any time, our study does suggest that the risks of gabapentin as they relate to fall risk in the first 6 months of initiation are not greater, or potentially favorable, versus an alternative medication that might be prescribed instead,” the research team concluded. Whatever your topic of interest, subscribe to our newsletters to get the best of Drugs.com in your inbox.

TUESDAY, Jan. 7, 2025 -- Incident use of gabapentin is not associated with an increase in fall-related hospital visits compared with duloxetine use, according to a study published online Jan. 7 in the Annals of Internal Medicine . Alexander Chaitoff, M.D., M.P.H., from the University of Michigan School of Medicine in Ann Arbor, and colleagues describe the risk for fall-related outcomes in older adults with diabetic neuropathy, postherpetic neuralgia, or fibromyalgia starting gabapentin versus duloxetine treatment. The analytic cohort included 57,086 older adults initiating treatment with gabapentin (52,152 adults) or duloxetine (4,934 adults). The researchers found that the weighted cumulative incidence rates of a fall-related visit at 30, 90, and 180 days were 103.60, 90.44, and 84.44 per 1,000 person-years, respectively, for gabapentin users and 203.43, 177.73, and 158.21 per 1,000 person-years, respectively, for duloxetine users. A lower hazard of falls was seen for incident gabapentin users at six-month follow-up (hazard ratio, 0.52), but no difference was seen in the risk for experiencing severe falls. Across sensitivity and subgroup analyses, the results were similar. "Incident gabapentin use, compared with incident duloxetine use, was associated with fewer fall-related health care visits and smaller differences in absolute measures and was not associated with an increase in more severe fall-related events," the authors write. "These considerations should be incorporated into conversations with patients who are considering starting gabapentin treatment."