"Case report: Long-standing complex regional pain syndrome relieved by a cephalosporin antibiotic"

My last post today featured the type of research we all hope for -- quantitatively accessible, peer-reviewed, standardized.  But the world of CRPS research, by the nature of the disease, is most often driven by the lone "case study," and, often, by "coincidental" discoveries.  So long as we have such limited treatment, and no cure at all, there is little disincentive to ignore anything.

What makes this article of interest to me is my personal experience of improvement in CRPS pain during unrelated courses of certain antibiotics.  I was unaware of it until my Go-To-Guy doctor reacted to one of my statements by flipping through my chart and discovering that he had noted the same observation from me over time, several times.  The antibiotics were, as it happens, cephalosporins.  I don't place enough trust in my perceptions to tout that as any sort of proof, and present it simply as information.

Case report: Long-standing complex regional pain syndrome relieved by a cephalosporin antibiotic

Mark A. Ware^{a, b, e, ,} , 

Gary J. Bennett^c, d, e

AbstractWe describe a young woman who had had treatment-refractory complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) for 6 years before receiving antibiotic treatment with cefadroxil (a cephalosporin derivative) for a minor infection. Cefadroxil reduced the patient’s pain and motor dysfunction (dystonia and impaired voluntary movement) within days; the pain and motor disorder returned when cefadroxil was discontinued; and both again abated when cefadroxil was re-instituted. The patient has now had symptom relief for more than 3 years on continuing cefadroxil therapy. We discuss this case in the context of previous reports of antibiotic treatment relieving neuropathic pain in experimental animals.