Flupirtine: New Help for Fibromyalgia, FTD?

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I bought a small quantity of flupirtine tablets from Germany. I wanted to see if it would help some of my pain that my usual opiates (fentanyl, methadone, hydromorphone) do not touch.  One type of intractable pain resembles Fibromyalgia (FM), an all-over achy pain, particularly deep in the joints, that comes and goes.  When it comes, it stays for hours or sometimes days.  It never just starts and then goes away.  I don’t know if it’s actually FM, or just another facet of my RSD.

Flupirtine maleate is a centrally acting, non-opioid analgesic that has been available in Europe for years.  It was used for lower back pain and post-surgical pain, and then for pain, generally.

Here’s the really important thing.  It also has CNS neuroprotective properties.   This is leading to its possible use for treating CNS neurodegenerative syndromes such as Alzheimer’s Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, including cognition in CJD.  It might be useful for FTD treatment, too.  Flupirtine is currently undergoing FDA trials for treating Fibromyalgia.  It is also known in Europe as Katadolon and Trancolong.  It is not available in the USA, as it is not FDA approved.

Typical dosage for adults is 100mg three or four times a day, half that for children.  I’m not sure about long-term use or side-effects, yet.  Most of the information is hidden behind registration walls, and I haven’t had time to do all the registrations.

Here is what happened with my first dose:

• 3:00 pm — fibromyalgia-like pain starts
• 3:25 pm — took 100mg flupirtine by mouth
• 4:45 pm — I realize the fibromyalgia-like pain is gone
• 4:55 pm — bad headache in upper right forehead
• 5:30 pm — took 1500mg acetaminophen and a short nap, and the headache’s gone

I think the headache is a side-effect of the flupirtine.  The location is exactly where I get a headache and feel electric sensations when I have flare-ups of FTD symptoms.  I doubt that’s a coincidence.  And headaches were reported as side-effects in a good article on flupirtine’s half-life for young, elderly, and renally-impaired patients.

PS.

I got the flupirtine from goldpharma.com, an internet pharmacy in Germany.  You have to fill out a brief medical history for a doctor to review to get the prescription.  The process was very fast, it only took a few minutes from submitting the history to get the prescription, and they shipped it the next day.  We got it in about a week.  The flupirtine came in 400mg tablets, so Selchietracker got a pill cutter, cut the tablets in half and then cut those halves in half to get the 100mg individual doses.  He thought it was kind of neat that the box of “Trancolong” also had the name in braille.  Geek.

[Via http://iamdying.net]