PHILADELPHIA – Nearly 7%-10% of the general population experiences neuropathic pain, but studies on treatments have not found a clear winner for reducing this “burning or electriclike pain,” explained Raymond Price, MD, during a presentation.
Andrew Bowser/MDedge News
Dr. Raymond Price
“It isn’t that exciting,” said Dr. Price, associate professor of neurology at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, in reference to his review of level 1-2 evidence for treatment of neuropathic pain that was presented in a study published in JAMA (2015 Nov 24;314[20]:2172-81). a few years ago. “On a scale of 1 to 10, you can reduce their pain scale by 1-2 points more than placebo,” he told his audience at the annual meeting of the American College of Physicians.
There are very limited head-to-head data as to which one is actually better,” he explained.
Given the absence of robust head-to-head trial data, Dr. Price tends to start a lot of patients on old, cheap medications like nortriptyline.
While there aren’t many head-to-head trials to guide treatment choice, the results of one prospective, randomized, open-label study of 333 patients with cryptogenic sensory polyneuropathy was presented by Barohn and colleagues at the 2018 annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology, he said. In that study, somewhat higher efficacy rates were seen with duloxetine, a serotonin-noradrenaline reuptake inhibitor, and nortriptyline, a tricyclic antidepressant, compared with pregabalin, Dr. Price noted. Duloxetine and nortriptyline also had slightly better tolerability, as evidenced by a lower quit rate, compared with pregabalin, he added.
There was also a systematic review and meta-analysis (Lancet Neurol. 2015 Feb; 14[2]:162-73) conducted that determined the number needed to treat for neuropathic pain treatments, Dr. Price noted. In that paper, tricyclic antidepressants had a number needed to treat of 3.6, comparing favorably to 7.7 for pregabalin, 7.2 for gabapentin, and 6.4 for serotonin-noradrenaline reuptake inhibitors, mainly including duloxetine, said Dr. Price.
Regardless of the cause of neuropathic pain, the same general approach to treatment is taken, though most of the evidence comes from studies of patients with painful diabetic peripheral neuropathy or postherpetic neuralgia, he added.
For these patients, an adequate trial of a neuropathic pain treatment should be 6-12 weeks, reflecting the length of the intervention needed to demonstrate the efficacy of these agents, he said.
If that first drug doesn’t work, another can be tried, or multiple drugs can be tried together to see if the patient’s condition improves, he said.
Dr. Price reported no conflicts of interest.
SOURCE: Price R Internal Medicine 2019, Presentation MSFM 002.