Instituut voor Neuropathische Pijn

In our clinic we continously search for new and better drugs and treatments for patients suffering from neuropathic pain. As many patients suffering from neuropathic pain are elderly people, with co-morbidity, often also facing cardiovascular problems, drugs like amitriptyline are relative contraindicated. Moreover, the sedative side effects are a big problem for these frail and mostly gait-unstable patients with polyneuropathy. Pain in the elderly is distinctly different from pain experienced by younger individuals.  ^[5] And thus pain in elderly needs individualized treatment. Considering side effect profiles is an important aspect of such a treatment.

Example of analgesic treatments with a low side effect profile are palmitoylethalonamide (PEA)^[6][7][8][9] and alpha-lipoic acid.^[10][11][12] Especially the absence of sedative side effects is important.

In relation to the first molecule, PEA, many elderly patients have been treated without side effect or dose limiting problems, or interaction problems. Within the context of clinical studies more then 350 elderly patients have been treated with palmitoylethanolamide without side effect problems, and also in our hands, we did not detect any clinical relevant side effects, even not in a patient aged 90.

To date the following numbers of elderly patients treated with palmitoylethanolamide (Normast®) have been evaluated: - 111 between 65 and 70 years old- 116 between 71 and 75 y.o.- 63 between 76 and 80 y.o.- 45 between 81 and 85 y.o.- 20 between 86 and 90 y.o. (Epitech data on file)