Comas and seizures are occurring among patients who overdose on pregabalin, Australian researchers say, after reviewing almost 500 hospitalisations.

Their five-year study has found recreational use of pregabalin skyrocketed from 4% of overdoses in 2014 to almost 40% in 2019, backing the view that abuse has grown since its PBS-listing in 2013.

The neuropathic pain therapy is now the sixth-most prescribed drug on the PBS and is often prescribed to vulnerable patients, warn the toxicologists, from the University of Queensland and University of Newcastle.

Their study shows that some 89 patients (18% of the cohort) ended up in a coma — defined as eight or lower on the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) — with 83 of them having co-ingested other sedating substances, such as oxycodone or diazepam.