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Role and rationale for the use of milnacipran in the management of fibromyalgia Full Text
Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment, 05/04/2010
Kranzler JD et al. – Although the pathophysiology of fibromyalgia (FM) is not completely understood, patients with FM experience pain differently from the general population, most likely due to dysfunctional pain processing in the central nervous system leading to both hyperalgesia and allodynia. In many patients with FM, this aberrant pain processing appears to involve decreased pain inhibition within the spinal tract, which is mediated by descending pathways that utilize serotonin, norepinephrine, and other neurotransmitters. The reduced serotonin and norepinephrine levels suggest that medications which increase the levels of these neurotransmitters, such as serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs), may have clinically beneficial effects in FM. Milnacipran is an SNRI that has been approved for the management of FM...This review article provides information intended to help clinicians make informed decisions about the use of milnacipran in the clinical management of patients with FM. It draws primarily on results from 2 of the pivotal clinical trials that formed the basis of approval of milnacipran in the United States by the Food and Drug Administration.
