In continuation of my update on gabapentin
"The study showed that after two weeks of gabapentin therapy, the seven women experienced an average 80 percent reduction in their nausea and a 94 percent reduction in their vomiting and near normal levels of eating and drinking," Guttuso says. After this study was published, Guttuso knows of five more women with hyperemesis gravidarum that tried gabapentin and all experienced excellent relief.
The women needed to take gabapentin on average until about half way through their pregnancies before they could stop it without recurrent nausea and vomiting.
One of the potential concerns with gabapentin was that two of the babies born to patients in the UB study were found to have congenital defects. As a result, the Food and Drug Administration placed the study on clinical hold in April 2011 until further safety data was available on the use of gabapentin during pregnancy.
By May 2012 several pregnancy registries and other studies had reported that the rate of congenital defects among a total of 258 infants born to women taking gabapentin early in their pregnancies was about the same as the rate of congenital defects in the general population. After reviewing these findings, the FDA removed the clinical hold allowing Guttuso to resume his research on the effects of gabapentin on hyperemesis gravidarum. Although the results of the small pilot study were very encouraging, Guttuso emphasizes that a placebo-controlled study among many more patients needs to be conducted in order to know if gabapentin truly is effective for hyperemesis gravidarum. "The evidence right now is still very preliminary," he states.
