Thursday, December 27, 2007

Drug treatments for Fibromyalgia

Co Cure report: Fibromyalgia syndrome (FM) is a condition of chronic and diffuse
muscular pain affecting particularly middle aged women. The aetiology
of FM is not completely understood and it is currently considered a
disorder of pain regulation.

The most efficacious compounds include the tricyclic drugs and mixed
reuptake inhibitors. Recent works suggest that the anticonvulsant
medications pregabalin and gabapentin are also effective. Moreover,
two serotonin and norepinephrine-reuptake inhibitors-duloxetine and
milnacipran show encouraging results in treating FM symptoms.

The results of clinical trials of anti-inflammatory medications have
been generally disappointing, but three RCTs have found that tramadol
(with or without acetaminophen) is effective in FM.

Personnally I have benefited from taking the max dose of nortryptaline which has improved my sleep hugely though not cleared all problems as evidenced by being up from 4am today after waking a huge number of times. . rough day ahead especially as will be visiting mum who had a very bad day yesterday with new pains requiring extra morphine...