Medication for Neuropathy & Seizure

Peripheral neuropathy is a condition that causes pain and numbness due to damage to the nerves that travel throughout your body and carry messages to your extremities. To treat neuropathy, doctors sometimes prescribe medications originally developed to treat seizures.

Types

• Seizure medications used to treat neuropathy include gabapentin, topiramate, pregabalin, carbamazepine and phenytoin.

Function

• While there is no cure for neuropathy and no way to reverse the damage that leads to the condition, seizure medications reduce the symptoms of the condition.

Time Frame

• Depending on the cause of your neuropathy, you may only need to take seizure medications for a limited period of time until symptoms subside; however, it is also possible to require long-term use of the drugs to control pain.

Risks

• The most common side effects of seizure drugs used to treat neuropathy are dizziness and drowsiness, according to the Mayo Clinic. The drugs also pose a number of risks, including the formation of cancerous tumors; suicidal thoughts or actions; glaucoma; hyperthermia; severe swelling of the lips tongue, throat or extremities; decreased blood platelet levels; life-threatening skin reactions like Stevens-Johnson syndrome; and liver damage, cautions RxList.

Considerations

• Carbamazepine and phenytoin have the potential to cause harm to a developing fetus, and the effects of the other seizure drugs upon pregnant women are unknown, reports RxList.