WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - A new study suggests that the seizure drug pregabalin, often prescribed for chronic pain, may raise the risk of heart failure especially in people who already have heart or blood vessel disease.
To reach this conclusion, researchers looked at more than 240,000 Medicare patients aged 65-89 who had chronic noncancer pain and no history of heart failure.
Between 2014 and 2018, about 8 percent started taking pregabalin and 92 percent started gabapentin, another pain medication. The study compared the two groups to see how often they developed heart failure.
Over the follow-up period, 1,470 patients were hospitalized or visited the emergency department for heart failure. Overall, those who started pregabalin had a 48 percent higher risk of developing heart failure compared to those who started gabapentin.
In people with a history of cardiovascular disease, the risk was 85 percent higher. This means there were about six more cases of heart failure each year for every 1,000 patients taking pregabalin. The drug was also linked to more outpatient heart failure diagnoses, but there was no difference in overall death rates between the two groups.
The findings support advice from the European Medicines Agency that doctors should be cautious when prescribing pregabalin to older adults with existing heart or blood vessel problems.
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