Common Antidepressants Could Combat Nerve Damage Associated with Chemotherapy Treatments

Statistics show that up to 40 percent of people who receive neurotoxic chemotherapy will suffer from ongoing nerve pain, which consists of tingling sensations andcan be felt in the hands and feet. However, new research may be able to offer some help for the pain through the use of common antidepressants.

According to Fox News, researchers at the University of Michigan studied 231 patients with nerve pain over the course of five weeks. Results indicated that such antidepressants as duloxetine, more commonly known as Cymbalta, which has also been known to decrease diabetic nerve pain, was effective at reducing pain compared with a placebo used.

Science Daily also indicates that serotonin and norepinephrine dual reuptake inhibitors can be effective in treating neuropathy-related pain.

The patients were randomized to receive either duloxetine followed by a placebo or the reverse. Eligibility required that patients have a pain score of at least 4 on a scale of 0 to 10, representing average chemotherapy-induced pain, after paclitaxel, other taxane, or oxaliplatin treatment.

The initial treatment consisted of taking 1 capsule daily of either 30 mg of duloxetine or placebo for the first week and 2 capsules of either 30 mg of duloxetine or placebo daily for 4 additional weeks.

The researchers found that at the end of the initial treatment period, patients in the duloxetine-first group reported a larger decrease in average pain (average change score, 1.06) than those in the placebo-first group (average change score 0.34). The observed average difference in the average pain score between the duloxetine-first and placebo-first groups was 0.73. Of the patients treated with duloxetine first, 59 percent reported any decrease in pain vs. 38 percent of patients treated with placebo first. Thirty percent of duloxetine-treated patients reported no change in pain and 10 percent reported increased pain.

 "We have up to this point not had good treatment options, so this is a very interesting study in that it does show some significant improvements in the patients that take this medication," said Dr. Harold Goforth, a pain expert at the Cleveland Clinic's Taussig Cancer Institute.

"It gives us hope that we are potentially better understanding this damage and that we can better tailor treatments in the future to better treat this and restore function in people in addition to curing their cancer."

The study is published in the Journal of American Medical Association.