Researchers have found that gabapentin not only “helps alleviate hot flashes” but then also results in a better night’s sleep. The drug also doesn’t seem to have the dependency issues that other drugs have.

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Gabapentin Can Improve Sleep in Women

One answer to the problem may be the drug gabapentin, a nonhormonal therapy. It was approved by the FDA to fight seizures, but other uses are becoming common. Gabapentin is widely prescribed to reduce pain.

In a study reported on at the National Cancer Institute website, patients taking gabapentin experienced either a 49% or 33% reduction in severity of hot flash symptoms depending on dosage (900 mg or 300 mg). The drug was also very well tolerated.

Researchers note the need for further studies comparing the effectiveness of nonhormonal drug treatments for hot flashes. Another drug commonly used with minimal side effects is the antidepressant venlafaxine.

Do you take a drug for hot flashes?

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Help for Hot Flashes

One of the things I remember the most was not only how much it hurt, but how tired and run down I felt. Just awful. And then there’s the itch too. Not fun at all.

Treating shingles (herpes zoster) pain is hard because it’s nerve pain (neuropathic pain), the toughest there is to treat. Some doctors prescribe gabapentin, which has some success in treating nerve pain, but it doesn’t help everyone. I remember that not much helped me. But researchers have published a study in the journal Pain , that has found that oxycodone is effective in helping relieve shingles pain.

The researchers looked at 87 people who had shingles, half of whom tookk oxycodone and the other half a placebo, a sugar pill. More than half of the patients who took oxycodone reported at least a 30% improvement over their pain level.

Managing pain in shingles is important because many who have shingles go on to have a complication called postherpetic neuralgia. This is a condition where the pain continues along the shingles line, long after the lesions have healed. For some people, it’s mildly painful, for others, it’s excruciating.

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Oxycodone for shingles pain?

Apparently, men who are undergoing anti-hormonal treatment or androgen-deprivation therapy as treatment for prostate cancer, experience hot flashes as well.

The only current therapeutic agents for this condition are androgen-originating hormones. However, some of which can actually fuel the growth of cancer. Men may be relieved of hot flashes but new cancer growth becomes an issue to worry about.

Now, according to North Central Cancer Treatment Group researchers (based at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.), low doses of the drug gabapentin can reduce hot flashes in this patient population of men.

…the drug gabapentin reduced the frequency and the intensity of hot flashes by up to 46 percent in men receiving androgen deprivation therapy.

The men who received gabapentin reported fewer side effects than those receiving a placebo tablet.

Gabapentin is being used to prevent epileptic seizures and to treat nerve pain caused by shingles.

According to the study’s lead investigator, Mayo Clinic oncologist Charles Loprinzi, M.D.:

“To my knowledge, this is the first nonhormonal treatment of hot flashes in men, where results from a placebo-controlled trial are positive enough to support that a nonhormonal medication can be used to help some of our patients.

Because gabapentin works on the central nervous system, its function may be similar to some antidepressants that are prescribed to reduce hot flashes in women entering menopause.

This [gabapentin] provides an immediate clinical option that has not been previously available for treatment of hot flash side effects, and it is a welcome one.”

The findings, presented at the recent annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago, came from the 223-patient, placebo-controlled Phase III clinical trial on gabapentin.

Approved by the FDA to treat epileptic seizures in 1994 and pain from shingles in 2002, gabapentin is marketed by Pfizer under the trade name Neurontin®.

Find more details from the Mayo Clinic full report.

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Pfizer’s Neurontin® (gabapentin): Can Reduce Hot Flashes in Men on Prostate Cancer Treatment