Lamictal.....

[tonyad]

  Hello Friends :)

    I went to an MS Seminar last night (on MS) He heads a Well Known MS Clinic in PuertoRico. After his Talk he opened up the floor with a Q and A time for us to ask questions.

    I asked him how many patients he has or how often he see's people w/ MS that have an AD also.
He said very often!  I asked him how he treated his patients w/ AD. He replied that AD w/ MS is very hard to treat and he basically does a trial and error thing but mostly just learning to live w/ it and do what your body tells you.

    He then said that he has (2) patients that he is currently RX'd Lamictal to and it seems (at least for now) be stabalizing their B/P.  He said he gives it in a Very low dose....I think only 25mg daily. Which is low becasue my daughter takes 200mgs 2x's daily for seizure disorder.

    OK, after all that :)  Here is my question........Have any of you heard of taking Lamictal (off Label) for AD? OR have any of you tried it or heard of it?

    Thanks in advance for the info.
Take Care,
~Tonya

[tonyad]

   Thanks LaLa :)  I certainly will be mentioning this to my Cardio and EP as
well as my Neuro.

    I suppose that you are taking Lamictal for Seizure Disorder?
If you do not want to share on public Forum I understand  ;)

~Tonya

[LaLa4]

Hi Tonya,
I have POTS and am on Lamictal in a higher dose (300mg I think) but wasn't prescribed for POTS.  I have read in a few places that Lamictal is prescribed occasionally for POTS (which made me feel better about taking it).  For me, it seems that any medication doesn't seem to affect my POTS one way or the other.  But I also don't usually get the crazy drop in BP so if that's your issue then maybe it does work for that.  As I said, I definitely have seen Lamictal mentioned in a few places and it's worth talking to your dr. about.

[beema36]

Heiferly-I am sure they do have that access. It seems my Drs r too lazy to do.this themselves. I know.that's disrespectful but its how.it feels. Unless I take something and put it in print into their hands they never look. It seems to me they would want to be on top of all this.info. Back when I was a working RN the Drs I worked with wanted to know all they could. Seems not anymore.

[Heiferly]

Your docs likely have access through their hospital affiliation, especially if it's a research/university hospital.  Some doctors have access through their former educational institutions' alumni access programs.

[beema36]

Heiferly- Thanks for directions to articles. I may just ask my ep and neuro to go into the ones behind paywall while.in their.office. They can pay if need be. Never hurts to ask.:)
Tonya- Seems it might be with it to try the lamictal. Won't hurt and u wont know if u don't try. Good luck.

[tonyad]

   I too have found a lot of info in regards to MS and AD.
your last link on your post will be a great source for many who are not able to find any info.

    I just thought that it was interesting that he said he is currently rx'ing a couple of his patients Lamictal (off Label) at a very low dose to help out w/ the AD in his MS patients.

   I may give my EP and Cardiologist a call next week to see what they think. Not to thrilled about adding MORE meds to my day but if I can get some sort of relief, than it just may be worth it!

  Have a safe and Great weekend,
~Tonya

[Heiferly]

How much research have you been able to pull on MS and autonomic dysfunction?  I've found a TON—I mean a flippin' TONNE—of journal articles on autonomic dysfunction in MS but seriously like 95% or more of them are behind the paywall (i.e. not free unless you have journal access, usually through a hospital or university).  The pay-per-article system is laughable (usually $30-$40 PER ARTICLE!!!) so there's no way I would even consider that.  I guess the neuro community keeps way more of their articles behind the paywall than the cardiology community (because I have pretty good luck getting cardiology articles, at least a decent percentage of them, for free).  So yeah, I can get you abstracts of a bunch of these ... but that's not saying much.

Here's where I did get full text:

http://content.karger.com/ProdukteDB/produkte.asp?Aktion=ShowFulltext&ArtikelNr=000064949&Ausgabe=228589&ProduktNr=223840

http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/47/9/947.full.pdf  

(The above one requires you to sign up for an account once, then you can always get bmj articles for free.  It has worked well for me (so long as you keep your username and password saved in a safe place where you can find it if/when you lose it), and I've never gotten any spam from them or anything.)

http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/31/1/19.full.pdf

(Same deal with signing up with bmj.  Even old articles like this can be enlightening since it's showing the foundation of how they started learning about autonomic dysfunction in MS.)


I can occasionally get access to articles behind the paywall, so I could read some of those myself and maybe summarize what I find for you, but I don't know when that would be.  You might be able to get articles like this for just the copying fee through interlibrary loan, but the copying fees might really add up (not as much as the $30-$40 per article, though, LOL).  I wish there were better public access to scientific research.  >:-(

Here's where I was looking in case you want to poke around:

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=0&q=%22multiple+sclerosis%22+%2B%22autonomic+dysfunction%22&hl=en&as_sdt=100000000000

[LivingInHope]

Also, took it prior to POTS diagnosis

[LivingInHope]

Hadn't heard of it for MS but took Lamictal for a few months trying it as a migraine preventative a neurologist prescribed for me- wouldn't be surprised if that was off label in 2000 and 2001.  Anyway, I think I though it was somewhat effective for migraine prevention but started having itchiness and the neurologist prescribed I think it was atarax for itching (didn't wind up getting it filled and discontinued medicine.  Not sure if I developed an allergy or if it was just stress, but went off Lamictal and now list it as a question mark allergy.

[beema36]

Tonya-No I haven't heard of taking lamictal for it but sounds like a really good seminar. Wish I could find data to show my ep the connection between ms and AD. We have already figured out we have to figure out how to live with it haven't we?
Thanks for sharing.  I am going to do some research into this info on lamictal.