Nearly 3 in 4 Users Had Improved Quality-of-Life Scores
By Salynn Boyles WebMD Health News
Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD
Aug. 27, 2012 -- A drug used to treat epilepsy and chronic pain after shingles also appears to be effective for another persistent condition: chronic cough.
About 1 in 10 people suffers from chronic cough, and for many the cause is unknown.
Chronic cough is a cough that lasts for longer than eight weeks. Treatment tends to focus on the underlying cause of the cough, which may be due to conditions like asthma, acid reflux, or postnasal drip. The condition is increasingly common, poorly understood, and difficult to treat, experts tell WebMD.
"Chronic cough can have a profound impact on quality of life, but most people, including many physicians, know very little about it," says cough researcher Kian Fan Chung, MD, of Imperial College in London. He was not involved with the research.
In the new study, published in the journal Lancet, researchers in Australia report that the epilepsy drug gabapentin (Neurontin) reduced cough severity in many people with chronic cough who did not respond to other treatments.
The drug may work by calming overstimulated nerves believed to play a role in chronic cough, researchers say.
Gabapentin can also be used to treat postherpetic neuralgia (chronic pain after shingles), in which abnormal sensitivity to pain is thought to be caused by increased excitability of the central nervous system.
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Epilepsy Drug Gabapentin Calms Chronic Cough