As you likely know, finding a good doctor and getting the right treatment for your fibromyalgia can be really difficult if you don’t know how to go about it. And, on top of that, it can be incredibly expensive for you to pay for the treatment that you need.
Because of this, a lot of people have been seeking out alternative, generic treatments that they can use in order to relieve their symptoms without completely breaking the bank. In this article, we’re going to look at one such medication that is showing some promise in clinical trials.
What is This Medication?
A cheap, generic medication that is, at present, used to treat drug and alcohol abuse may offer help to individuals who have fibromyalgia. In pilot study, Stanford University specialists gave the medication naltrexone or a placebo to 10 different women who had been diagnosed with fibromyalgia in the past 4 months.
Before the end of the study, the women in the study who were taking the naltrexone indicated a 30% reduction in their pain, specifically when compared with the women who were taking the placebo.
A teacher of anesthesia and ache administration at the Stanford University School of Medicine, who was the lead specialist on the study, concedes that the choice to attempt naltrexone for fibromyalgia seems to be a bit odd if you know what it is usually used for.
That is on account of naltrexone, a medication that has been utilized for 30 years to treat drug and alcohol abuse, meets expectations by obstructing the influences of opioids on the cerebrum; and opioids help to reduce pain.
Anyhow, Younger says that in more modest measurements, the medication may have an alternate impact, essentially turning off the cells called microglia. Microglia are usually fine cells to have.
They’re our mind’s immune system cells, and when they locate an infection or something they get to be enacted, and they create various chemicals that help battle off the contamination, however they additionally deliver chemicals that make us feel exhausted.
The speculation is that microglia may be turned on, and stay on, actually when there’s no contamination to battle. If that’s the case, then fibromyalgia is about the immune system.
Younger says he got the thought to study naltrexone due to the triumphs reported by a gathering of specialists in New Jersey who had attempted it on their patients who have the condition, which is portrayed by far reaching pain and weakness.
Younger believes that, even though these may show that there are a lot of things His pilot study, which was distributed in the April 17, 2009, issue of Pain Medicine, was also given an award from the Arthritis Foundation. For this starting examination, scientists selected 10 women with a clinical conclusion of fibromyalgia and had them take 5 milligrams of naltrexone or a placebo every day for 14 weeks.
Every patient took both the medication and the placebo, so they went about as their own particular control subjects, yet they were not told which weeks they were taking a placebo and which weeks they were given naltrexone.
Each of the women had a small device that helped them to track what was going on, and they used it to report manifestations of pain, weariness, anxiety, rest quality, depression the capacity to think, the ability to recollect information, headaches, and gastrointestinal issues. Those in the study were also assessed daily in terms of their temperature and other normal bodily items.
During the times where the women were taking the placebo, the symptoms decreased only about 2 to 3 percent. When the women were taking the naltrexone, they were seeing their side effects decrease by over 32 percent. So the women were seeing a significant difference in the pain that they were dealing with.
Now, of course, there were side effects, but they were negligible. Two of the women who were in the study had very odd dreams while they were taking the medications. One of them felt sick to her stomach and struggled with sleeping for a few nights. All three of the women saw their symptoms go away after taking the medication for a couple of weeks.
So, did it work? Well, you need to hear this really important fact. The naltrexone was so advantageous for some study members that they kept on taking it, and they continued to see a decrease in their pain and other symptoms, even after the study was over. These researchers were so excited by these results that they are currently in the progress of putting together a large, double blind study that will help them to see whether or not these results could be replicated in other patients.
Why Does it Matter?
There are a lot of reasons as to why this actually matters, and the main one is that it will end up being a lot more affordable for fibromalygia patients to get the care that they need. The medications that are used in order to treat the symptoms of this disorder can end up costing a lot of money, and it puts a lot of these people into bad situations – some of them have to choose between their medication and whether or not they will be able to get around or eat. It’s gotten that bad.
By having a generic version available, many of these people will be able to lower the costs of their medications and they will be able to relieve some of the financial stress that they may be dealing with.
Of course, as you may expect, there is a lot of testing that still has to go on before these can go onto the market. But the good news is, they are well on their way. As well as the trials have gone, it hopefully will not be long before this generic drug starts to go on the market. We can hope, at least, so that those struggling from fibromyalgia can get the help and the pain relief that they are looking for from a pain medication.
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