Rising pregabalin use and misuse in Australia: trends in utilization and intentional poisonings

Abstract

There has been a dramatic increase in pregabalin use, poisonings and deaths in Australia since it became subsidized publicly in 2013. One in seven Australians dispensed pregabalin appears to be at high risk of misuse.

Monitoring emerging prescription‐drug related harms: a comment on Cairns et al. (2018)

“…The study by Cairns and colleagues presents a comprehensive and multi‐faceted approach to understanding pregabalin‐related harms in urban Australia, with novel use of latent class analysis methodology providing clinically meaningful insights into high‐risk profiles for pregabalin use. The study provides convincing evidence of increasing pregabalin use and harms arising from pregabalin poisoning, as well as the impact of co‐ingestion of sedatives, including benzodiazepines and opioids.…”

Pregabalin: A range of misuse‐related unanswered questions

“…7 Although observations of behavioral dependence were described in patients who had no prior substance abuse history, these cases appeared to be quite rare. 7 to be mildly dependent on nonopioid analgesics, but one case with a previous dependence on gabapentinoids was identified Third, in many studies 1,5 it was unclear if pregabalin was most typically prescribed to those affected by anxiety conditions to either "boost" and/or to replace existing benzodiazepine prescriptions. Is the pregabalin state of mind different from that associated with benzodiazepines' intake?…”

Commentary on Cairns et al. (2020): Codeine rescheduling—where to from here?

“…It is likely that regulatory and other supply‐side levers will continue to be important to address emerging harms with pharmaceutical drugs. For example, there are increasing concerns with pregabalin , quetiapine and other strong opioids . Recently, unintended harms, including shifts to more harmful substance use, have been documented following oxycodone reformulation in Australia .…”