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Hello and welcome to the medicine safety video podcast my baton october we issued a clinical alert which talked about the need to take care when administering the drugs per gallon and gabapentin we’re just going to talk a little bit about that alert today soap regardless some of you may know it by its brand name lyrica or lyonka and gabapentin mostly used in the
Generic form 9 but you may still hear referred to by its brand name neurontin and you’ll notice that the name of both of these medicines have the letters g a b a in it and that’s because both of these drugs bears structural resemblance to gamma-aminobutyric acid or gaba for short and gathers a compound that occurs naturally in the body and it’s actually the central
Nervous systems main inhibitory neurotransmitter so firstly kevin it might be good just to start by telling people what these drugs can be used for sure but basically use for three things first thing is for youth treating seizures i’m certainly for treating a special type of pain that some patients are from called europe having pain and thirdly more recently if
They’ve been used to treat generalized anxiety disorder yet supra governments license for generalized anxiety disorder so the drugs can be used both for physical health condition and mental health conditions and they’re quite commonly used drugs actually we published the clinical alert because we wanted people to be aware of 2min facts and the first of those was
That these drugs are open to misuse and i wonder could you tell us a bit more by that sure we’re becoming increasingly aware that these drugs are open to misuse they produce euphoria so they make this patient feel euphoric happy more comfortable we do know that these drugs are misused on the street we know that people are becoming independent upon them and also
They have a street value so patients may be able to sell the drugs on the street to other drug users and there’s actually been a call to reclassify these drugs as class c controller colonia and so i guess it’s just really important for people to be aware that as service users may be misusing these drugs and not today is applied a bit tiem either from their tp or
Listening definitely so the second point that the clinical alert and try to highlight was the fact that these drugs can cause central nervous system depression cns depression and i wonder could you maybe explain that term for as he also cns depression is nothing to do with little mood nothing to do with low moods at all what happens when you develop seeing this
Depression is that your breathing rate goes down yes your heart rate goes down you start to lose on consciousness you may actually slip into a coma and in a few tragic situation patients have died from taking the overdose of these drugs so it’s a very serious side effect and you need to axial it immediately if you see a patient suffering from those symptoms and
There are other drugs that cause cns depression as well and that the effect of those drugs can be added in if people take them with regard them and gather penton so what might some of those so the similar drugs will be alcohol for example very commonly used you’ll see that depression on its own right medication used to treat anxiety so analytics better data pin
And antipsychotics as well for all those three drugs problems appearing on the slide are drugs which will add to this the effect of the pre government that we’re going to get an opioid painkiller is another big one or yeah things like methadone as well as for may use certain luminous trusts really important that we pay attention to these drugs that we make sure
We knew when people are taking them and we avoid other cns depressants and possible so you can’t read the clinical alert that’s on the internet no if you just search for pre goblin you should be able to find it but until the next time thank you kevin thank you for watching and very much
Transcribed from video
Medicines Safety – Pregabalin and Gabapentin By East London NHS Foundation Trust
