Data study showed brain cancer patients who took pain drug survived an average of 4 months longer

Image of glioblastoma cells – Credit UCSF Brain Tumor Center

CANCER DIGEST – May 17, 2025 – Patients with the most common and lethal form of brain cancer who took a common nerve pain drug during their treatment survived significantly longer than those who didn’t take the drug, a news data analysis study reveals.

Glioblastoma is the most common form of brain cancer and afflicts 12,000 people a year in the U.S. It is an aggressive cancer that is persistently resistant to treatment. Survival has remained at an average of 12 to 14 months after diagnosis for more than two decades. Consequently, a finding that a common pain drug extends survival in these patients would encouraging.

In a laboratory study led by Saritha Krishna, PhD, at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Brain Tumor Center it was discovered in mice that a protein called thrombospondin-1 (TSP-1) plays a key role in the development and remodeling of neurons and tumor cells that promote glioma growth, and that the drug gabapentin successfully targets the neuron tumor interaction, which suggested a potential therapeutic strategy.

Intrigued by the discovery, Joshua Bernstock, MD, PhD a  clinical fellow in the Department of Neurosurgery at Brigham and Women's Hospital took a look at survival outcomes of 693 patients treated for glioblastoma at Mass General Brigham and Women’s Hospital, many of whom had received the drug gabapentin for pain.

What they found surprised them. Of the 693 glioblastoma patients, 103 were given gabapentin for pain after surgery, and 590 did not receive the pain medication. When they compared survival data they found that the gabapentin patients survived an average of 16 months compared to 12 months for those who did not take the pain drug.

Bernstock then contacted Dr. Shwan Hervey-Jumper at the UCSF, who analyzed similar survival data of 379 glioblastoma patients treated at UCSF. They found that among those patients taking gabapentin survived an average of 20.8 months compared to 14.7 months for those who did not take the pain drug.

Together the combined data analysis study involved 1,072 patients who died of glioblastoma, making the finding of a  survival benefit for glioblastoma patients taking gabapentin as significant. The findings were published in the May 15, 2025 journal Nature Communications.

"GBM is a relentlessly progressive and nearly universally fatal disease," Bernstock said in a press release. "The discovery that an already approved medication with a favorable safety profile can extend overall survival represents a meaningful and potentially practice-changing advance."

That said, the researchers caution that this study was a retrospective data analysis. The drug gabapentin was not given to the patients analyzed in a controlled way to test its effects. Larger randomized clinical trials are needed to confirm the results of this study.

Sources: Mass General Brigham Hospital press release and Nature Communications.