Lyrica

[neilw]

My wife has just begun to use Lyrica on a very small dose. It has not been prescribed because of eye pain but because of pain elsewhere. However, she does think (and has been told) that corneal neuralgia is a component of her dry eye so we are hopeful that the Lyrica may help with the eye pain as well.

What she has noticed in the first week that she has so far been on the Lyrica is that her eyes feel dryer and certainly not less painful. She has also had a cold during this time and taken some strong cough medication too, which could be the cause of the dryer eyes.

I was wondering if anyone who is on Lyrica has had a worsening of their eye dryness? If so, I guess one would not stay on it.

I'd also be interested to know what dosage people are taking.

Any experiences with Endep would also be interesting as Endep is probably the next option although we do know the chances of eye dryness with this are higher.

Thanks
Neil

[unicorn]

Hi Neil
I took Lyrica for around two months supposedly to help with eye pain. Over this time I increased the dose until I was on 450mg a day.
It didn't help my eye pain significantly - perhaps a tiny improvement in my evening pain, say 5-10%? , but my daytime symptoms worsened, so I think it actually was making my eyes a tiny bit drier. Hard to really say for sure. But overall it wasn't for me and I found the side effects (headache, dizziness, feeling drunk!) too much to cope with so I stopped taking it.
I had quite bad insomnia and depression as a withdrawal effect, but obviously I was on a very high dose, and not everyone will get these, so please don't worry about it too much if your wife decided to stop taking it.

Edited to add - at the time it was thought that my eyes were so sore because of a neuralgia type pain - however I now believe that diagnosis was wrong, so it may help others who do indeed have a neuralgia component to their eye pain.

[mvallence90]

I tried Lyrica over a year ago to very poor results, was on it for only 3 weeks and it made my eyes drier, didn't reduce corneal sensitivity and seemed to heighten my anxiety. I've seen a Neurologist recently and he suggests I try an older drug along the same lines but with less side effects called Gabapentin. Problem is you can freely give prescriptions out for it as its usually only given to people who suffer from Epilepsy, but my doctors has seen positive results in it reduced never pain in people's faces. I have to get another drug I won't even use before getting the Gabapetin just to keep Medicare at bay...

[neilw]

Thank you Unicorn and Mvallence90 for your responses.
Kathy is only on 25 mg and her GP only wants her to increase it very slowly. She thinks this will reduce the likelihood of bad side effects. So far it has had only very minor affect on her pain - it has "taken the edge off". Kathy seems more tired to me but again only marginally.
Gabapentin in Neurontin I think. I had noticed that this drug does not list "dry mouth" as a side effect so that is encouraging. But they all have side effects for some people. All of these types of drugs target the synapses (predominantly in the brain) and it is my (un-expert) theory that because the brain is so concentrated and complex it is easy for any drug that works in the brain to have unexpected effects - and these will differ from person to person. Hence, some people get bad side effects and for others the drug does not even seem to do anything.

Medicine is very complex and we know far less than we don't know.