ScienceDaily.com reports on a recent medical study conducted in Germany which shows that two medications commonly prescribed for fibromyalgia offer benefit to only about 1 out of every 5 patients.
The study looked at testing conducted on 6,000 adults – mostly middle aged females – who were prescribed duloxetine (Cymbalta), milnacipran or a placebo. Study participants were asked to rate these drugs on a “quality of life” scale. Only 22% of participants reported significant improvement, while 21% discontinued using medications because of side effects.
A future study will evaluate pregabalin (Lyrica) later this year.
“The medical field does poorly with the treatment of fibromyalgia in general,” says Brian Walitt, M.D., M.P.H., a co-author of the review and an expert in pain syndromes at Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C. “Chasing [a cure] with medicine doesn’t seem to work.”
This relative ineffectiveness of prescription medication should not be a surprise to Social Security disability claimants who are applying for benefits due to chronic pain, cognitive decline and fatigue associated with fibromyalgia. Obviously individuals who allege that the are disabled are not benefiting from medications, and claimant’s attorneys often note symptoms of depression due to the absence of any viable treatment options.
If you have been prescribed Cymbalta, Lyrica or any other prescription medication by your doctor, it is important that you make every effort to remain complaint with recommended treatment. Social Security judges are often not very understanding if a claimant decides to stop taking a medication on his or her own, even if that medication does not seem to be working.
At the very least, report to your doctors any concerns about the effectiveness and side effects of medications so that your medical record will reflect what you have experienced. Judges will use non-compliance as a basis for denying claims and this is especially true for cases involving a condition that arises from symptoms that are inherently subjective and self -reported.
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