Yet, 95% of its prescriptions usage are for pain; nerve pain, low-back pain, post-operative pain, and so on. But while the gabapentin is indeed effective for some specific types of nerve pain (diabetic neuropathy), it is ineffective for many other types (e.g sciatica), as confirmed by follow-up studies by Pfizer.
Yet, prescriptions for these ineffective off-label usages continue.
Re pharmacist brother: this is kind of true, but gabapentin is usually used as an adjunctive therapy for things like sciatica—even when not effective in isolation, it may help amplify other treatments, and is effective for that (was not able to synthesize the explanation for why this is true, drug interactions are complex and I don’t understand them.) That is, gabapentin might not be an ineffective off-label prescription even though it is not effective as a primary treatment.
Re pharmacist brother: this is kind of true, but gabapentin is usually used as an adjunctive therapy for things like sciatica—even when not effective in isolation, it may help amplify other treatments, and is effective for that (was not able to synthesize the explanation for why this is true, drug interactions are complex and I don’t understand them.) That is, gabapentin might not be an ineffective off-label prescription even though it is not effective as a primary treatment.