A class of drugs used to treat epilepsy, nerve pain and anxiety do not appear to increase a person’s risk of self-harm, a major new study says.

The study was recently published in the British Medical Journal.

Gabapentinoids — which include gabapentin and pregabalin — have been associated with an increased risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors, researchers said in background notes.

But researchers found that patients had an increased risk of self-harm prior to being prescribed gabapentinoids, and that the risk rises again shortly after they stop taking the drugs.

“Our results cannot rule out a potential risk of self-harm associated with gabapentinoid prescriptions, but the association does not seem to support a direct effect of gabapentinoid treatment on self-harm because of the elevated risks observed before treatment initiation,” concluded the research team led by Kenneth Man, a lecturer in pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety at University College London.

In 2008, the Food and Drug Administration issued a report indicating an increased risk of suicide among people who took gabapentinoids and other antiseizure medications.

To test this, researchers analyzed health records for 10,000 adults in the UK who were prescribed gabapentinoids between 2000 and 2020 and had at least one recorded incident of self-harm.

Results show the rate of self-harm increased by 69% in the three months prior to the start of gabapentinoid treatment, suggesting that people prescribed the drugs were already at higher risk.

The risk declined during drug treatment, but increased again in the two-week period after patients stopped taking the meds, researchers found.

This suggests that gabapentinoids are unlikely to be directly linked to self-harm risk, researchers concluded.