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Antidepressant can help relieve chemo pain: Study

Written by: QMI Agency
Jun. 4, 2012

(SHUTTERSTOCK)

An antidepressant drug can help chemotherapy patients who feel painful tingling, a new study has found.

The tingling feeling — usually felt in the toes, feet, fingers and hands — can be uncomfortable for many patients, but for about 30% of patients, it's painful, the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center researchers said in the study.

They found in 59% of cases, the drug duloxetine, known commercially as Cymbalta, helped relieve that painful, tingling feeling.

"These drugs don't work in everyone. The good news is it worked in the majority of patients. We need to figure out who are the responders. If we can predict who they are, we can target the treatment to the people it's going to work for," lead author of the study, Ellen M. Lavoie Smith, said in a release.

This type of antidepressant is believed to work on pain by increasing neurotransmitters that interrupt pain signals to the brain, the researchers said.

The study will be presented Tuesday at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's annual meeting.

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