Efficacy of Ganglioside GM1 in the Treatment of Postherpetic Neuralgia

Postherpetic neuralgia (PHN) is a commonest and difficult-to-manage complication of Herpes zoster. This comparative study included 140 cases of PHN admitted in the department of dermatology in Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan, China, from March 2014 to February 2015, divided into a control and a study group. In addition to the combination of antiviral, analgesic, and neurotrophic agents given to the control group, additional ganglioside GM1 was given to patients in the study group. Pain assessment was performed at the time of admission, and then on the third, seventh and tenth day of treatment, on both groups, using a 10 cm visual analogue scale (VAS). There was a significant statistical difference between the pain VAS score of the two groups, on the seventh day (3.73 +/- 1.66 vs. 3.03 +/- 1.86, p=0.024) and on the tenth day (3.25 +/- 1.78 vs. 2.20 +/- 1.59, p=0.006) of treatment. The number of patients who have good /and complete response (37.5%) were largely higher in the study group than those in the control group (15%, p < 0.05). This finding demonstrates that the administration of ganglioside GM1 may potentially serve as a neoadjuvant therapy to reduce the severity and duration of pain in PHN patients.