An extremely popular nerve pain drug commonly given to those suffering from low-back issues has been linked to impaired mental health including dementia and mild cognitive impairment. The risk was present after six or more prescriptions were filled.
If you suffer from chronic back pain – or a range of other types of persistent neurological pain – chances are you've been prescribed gabapentin to offer some relief at one point or another. Although it's not entirely clear how the drug works, it seems to block pain signals to the brain while also mediating its electrical activity. Gabapentin, which is also used as an anti-seizure medication, has a low risk of addiction, so it's generally considered much safer than opioids for treating chronic pain. However, a new study points to a reason to be concerned about its long-term use.
In discovering the link, researchers at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and Arizona State University examined data obtained from TriNetX, an online depository of real-time data provided by 68 US-based health organizations. The team sourced two groups of about 26,000 patients each: one had been prescribed gabapentin for chronic low-back pain and the other hadn't. The range of the data spanned from 2004 to 2024.
After screening for demographics, co-existing conditions and the use of other painkillers, the researchers found that people who had filled six or more gabapentin prescriptions were 29% more likely to be diagnosed with dementia and 85% more likely to be diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) within 10 years of their initial pain diagnosis.
When examining the data by age, the team found that adults aged 35-49 had double the risk of dementia and triple the risk of MCI than those in the same age group who were not prescribed the drug. Furthermore, the study revealed an increase in risk the longer any one individual took gabapentin. Those who filled more than 12 prescriptions were 40% more likely to develop dementia and 65% more likely to develop MCI than those who had filled between three and 11 prescriptions.
As with all observational studies, the researchers caution that a solid cause-and-effect link can't be established between dementia and gabapentin; however, they feel that their analysis of a large quantity of available data calls for increased caution when prescribing and taking the drug.
"Our findings indicate an association between gabapentin prescription and dementia or cognitive impairment within 10 years," they say. "Moreover, increased gabapentin prescription frequency correlated with dementia incidence."
"Our results support the need for close monitoring of adult patients prescribed gabapentin to assess for potential cognitive decline."
The research has been published in the journal Regional Anesthesia & Pain Medicine.
