Canadian researchers at Queen’s University and Kingston General Hospital in Ontario, have shown that people who suffer from nerve pain respond better to treatment that combines two drugs.
They therefore suggest that those patients who do not respond to the antiepileptic drug gapapentine or the antidepressant drug nortripytyline, should use both drugs combined.
56 people participated in this study. On a scale of 1 to 10, they had a daily pain threshold of 4. With the combined drugs, they report that the pain decreased to 2.3 out of 10.
According to the study published in The Lancet, nerve pain affects 2 to 3% of the population. This is mainly due to a dysfunctional nervous system caused by effects from diabetes or nerve damage due to a viral infection like varicella-zoster.