India, Aug. 8 -- 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 ...