Posted by SLS on August 31, 2005, at 7:20:24
In reply to SLS - your expertise, please!, posted by ClearSkies on August 30, 2005, at 12:40:04
Hi.
I apologize for not responding more promptly.
> I think I saw something in the archives that the Campral and Lamictal might be a promising combination for my depressive bipolar2 condition
Campral is on my list of things to try. I would be combining it with Lamictal. I suffer from a bipolar depression that is neither type I or type II. I never experience mania nor euthymia unless antidepressants are involved to provoke it. Both drugs might act synergistically to reduce the activity at NMDA receptors. Campral is a glutamate release inhibitor. Lamictal also reduces extracellular glutamate, albeit through an undescribed mechanism. Keep memantine in mind as an alternative if you experience a partial or transient response to Campral. It is a NMDA receptor antagonist (non-competitive). I did respond transiently to memantine.
> - any thoughts on whether this might be sucessful?
We both know that sometimes this question is only answerable by trial and error. I wish I could give you a more glowing report of using this combination. Suffice it to say that Lamictal and memantine in combination did not give me the persistent robust antidepressant response I was looking for. If Campral fails to elicit any kind of improvement, you might want to give Trileptal a try. Both Trileptal and Lamictal affect sodium channels. Lamictal does so particularly at the higher dosages. I was impressed with Trileptal. That I only respond to things for 3 days before relapsing is idiosyncratic to my biology, and I cannot extend my experience to other people's results to the same medication. In other words, my biology is pretty weird. That I only received 3 days of relief from Trileptal cannot be generalized to the general population of bipolar suffers. On the contrary, it might be an indication that it would work well for others.
> I'm getting kind of tired of the bait and switch routine.
I am confused what you mean by this.
I hope this post was helpful. I haven't thoroughly researched any adverse interactions there might be between Campral and Lamictal, but I don't recognize any at this point.
- Scott
poster:SLS
thread:548715
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050827/msgs/549119.html