Role of Pregabalin in Management of Pruritus: A Literature Review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Pruritus can be one of the distressing symptoms of many dermatologic, systemic, neurologic or psychiatric disorders. In each case, the origin of itch is in the skin and/or the nervous system. Involvement of the nervous system causes neurogenic, psychogenic or neuropathic itch. Itch sensation is transferred to the central nervous system via unmyelinated C-type nerve fibers, and many mediators and receptors engage in the its induction and transmission. Also it has been demonstrated that there are similarities and interactions between neurotransmitters and pathways of pain and itch sensation. Hence, effective drugs in reducing the neuropathic pain such as pregabalin have been studied and used in the management of different itchy conditions. In this narrative review we considered the available published papers dealing with the antipruritic effects of pregabalin. Results of studies conducted in uremic patients show that pregabalin is an effective option in reducing uremic pruritus especially in those who have not responded to antihistamines and topical moisturizers. Data about the effects of pregabalin on other itchy conditions are very limited; however results of the available studies show beneficial effects of this drug in burn patients with more than 5% involvement of the total body surface area, in prurigo nodularis, and in chronic and idiopathic itch. One considerable issue is that the therapeutic effects of pregabalin on uremic pruritus and post burn itch may appear more rapidly than its effects in the other conditions (1-2 weeks vs > 4 weeks). The most reported adverse effects of pregabalin are sedation, dizziness and drowsiness. Whether pregablin can be unequivocally considered as an effective and reasonable choice in the management of pruritus with different causes is a question that should be answered through large scale randomized controlled studies.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".