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Is Topamax an Effective Treatment for PTSD?

23rd August, 2011 - Posted by health news - No Comments

Treatment for epilepsy has been approved for Topamax, the brand name of Topiramate, which has also been given an indication for the prevention of migraine headaches. However, this does not stop medical practitioners from doing off-label prescription with studies showing Topamax effective at treating PTSD(post-traumatic stress disorder). Pause should, however, be taken in off-label prescription with lawsuits expected to crop up in relation to recent studies linking Topamax to an increasing number of birth defects.

Chronic PTSD is a notoriously difficult illness to treat particularly because of significant psychiatric comorbidity and the persistence and intensity of symptoms like nightmares and hyper-arousal. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had approved some selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) drugs like Zoloft and Paxil to treat PTSD but their effects are often limited and introduce problematic side effects like sexual dysfunction and weight gain.

Topamax’ efficacy in treating PTSD is supported by growing evidence that it could either be used as an add-on strategy or as a monotherapy with particular value for re-experiencing symptoms such as nightmares. That this evidence is based on only a limited controlled data with only three smaller scale placebo-controlled trials should be given importance.This fact alone should make both prescribers and patients cautious especially with recent studies linking Topamax to serious birth defects years after it was approved by FDA as a treatment for epilepsy.

In 2008, studies were released, suggesting that women taking Topamax during pregnancy are putting their infants at high risk for birth defects, in the United Kingdom. And since then, this fact has been studied in the U.S., however, Topamax manufacturer Johnson and Johnson failed to change the medication’s pregnancy warnings until this year when the FDA released information about it. Johnson and Johnson could be facing lawsuits which could be filed by families who have been affected or suffered the side effects of the antiepileptic drug Topamax for not releasing the warnings earlier.

Among the Topamax side effects revealed in the studies are infants being at high risk for developing cleft lip and cleft palate and the genital birth defect known as hypospadias. Off-label prescription of Topamax such as for PTSD treatment should take into consideration the discovery of these side effects.