Antidepressants may help people living with the chronic pain of fibromyalgia experience fewer symptoms and improve their quality of life, new research shows.
The study, lead by Dr. Winfried Hauser, of Klinikum Saarbrucken in Germany, found that fibromyalgia patients had less pain, fatigue and depression while on certain antidepressants.
Tricyclic and tetracyclic antidepressants helped the most to reduce pain, fatigue and sleep disturbances, according to the report published in the Jan. 14 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Serotonin and noradrenaline reuptake inhibitors helped with those three symptoms but to a much lesser extent, while selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and monoamine oxidase inhibitors helped lessen pain some.
Fibromyalgia affects up to nearly 6 percent of people in North America and Europe, carrying with it high direct and indirect disease-related costs.
"Since evidence for a long-term effect of antidepressants in [fibromyalgia] is still lacking, their effects should be re-evaluated at regular intervals to determine whether benefits outweigh adverse effects," the authors wrote in a news release from the journal. "The identification of patient characteristics associated with positive and negative therapeutic outcomes are needed to better target antidepressant therapy for [fibromyalgia]."
I don't doubt that for some people these are needed and are quite effective. I will NEVER take one again. I was put on Cymbalta for nerve pain. I now know to ask a question with any new medication "is there any withdrawls once I go off this medication"? I learned this the hard way. I was on Cymbalta for just over two months, I decided to go off of it because I was having side effects and because it was not doing a thing for my nerve pain. I notified my doctor and they instructed me how to go off this medication, its one of those that you simply cannot just stop taking it. Now, I know with certain types of medication (narcotics) if you are on them long enough your body will become tolerant of them and you will withdraw from them but I never knew you could and would have severe withdrawls from an anti-depressant. For only being on this medication for two months I was unprepared for the withdrawls I went through. Like I previously stated I think these type of medications help many people, however, I also believe the drug manufacturers are negligent in putting out information about how and what will happen when you come off of this medicine. I literally thought I was dying, I realize no one knows me well enough on this board yet, but I am not prone to drama. I went to the doctor about six days after no Cymbalta. I was having tachacardia (sp) my heart was beating too fast, among other things. The doctor rxed a mild sedative for a few days until the Cymbalta would be mostly out of my system. I reseached about Cymbalta and found page after page of people who were on it and had stopped taking it and what they went through. I dont think the FDA throughly tested this, at least not the side effects once you stopped taking it.