Lyrica - Pain Management Message Board

katkat · 11-07-2005, 07:43 PM

Does anyone know exactly how this works in the body? Also what kind of side effects does it have?
I've been off all my pain medication for more than a month and the pain is killing me. I don't know what I am going to do but the side effects of the narcotics suck, I do know that.

Piano0105 · 11-08-2005, 12:31 PM

I'm not sure of the exact mechanism of action, but when I tried the smallest dose available I had stomach problems. In addition, it made me very sleepy during the daytime, but I would have insomnia at night. My tingling pain also became worse. Haven't heard too many "success" stories on this one yet.

RetiredDirector · 11-08-2005, 01:16 PM

Lyrica is a new anticonvulsant used for seizures and certain types of neuropathic pain. It received FDA approval in June and was just released in the US. It is due to be released in Canada shortly. In the US it is a Schedule V drug.

katkat · 11-08-2005, 01:24 PM

thanks for the input Piano, I tried neurontin before but went off of it shortly after I started my morphine. I thought the neurontin had cured the nerve type pain I had and only was left with the other pain. Boy was I wrong, when I went off the morphine it was back full force.
Director, what is a schedule v drug? What does the v indicate?

I was just wanting to know if this drug is a pain reliever or actually does somehting to make the nerve better.....like healing it ?

RetiredDirector · 11-08-2005, 01:39 PM

Katkat: It doesn't actually "heal" the nerves, it works to minimize the nerve pain, like a pain med (ie:Morphine) would.

Neuropathic pain can be very difficult to treat; even strong opioid analgesics may provide only partial relief and are not approved by the FDA for neuropathic pain indications. Controlled studies of opioid analgesics that have shown pain relief have not shown any consistent improvement in quality of life indicators. However, several classes of medications not normally thought of as analgesics are often effective, alone or in combination with opioids and other treatments. These include tricyclic antidepressants such as amitriptyline (Elavil®), anticonvulsants such as gabapentin (Neurontin®) and pregabalin (Lyrica®) and serotonin norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors ((SSNRI such as duloxetine (Cymbalta®).

A Schdedule V (as in 5) is the lowest class of drugs based on the FDA schedule. An example would be Morphine is a Schedule II (#2). Hydrocodone is a Schedule III (#3).

I hope this helps.