Role of duloxetine in neuropathic pain: A clinical impact, mechanism, challenges in formulation development to safety concern

Neuropathic pain (NP) is a dreadful disease of the somatosensory nervous system with many etiologies. The antidepressant drug is recommended as the first-line drug for the management of such pain. Duloxetine (DXH) is one of the classes of antidepressant drugs having an efficient use in mild to severe pain management. There are many clinical studies conducted on DXH and tested for its effectiveness in NP. For this review articles were collected from PubMed, Science Direct, goggle scholar, and other relevant sites. This review is based on the recently updated articles on duloxetine. The inclusion criteria for this was an English, clinical study with a year of publication between mostly 2010–2020, the DXH and its treatment of NP, comparison of DXH with another drug for the treatment of NP. The only exclusion criteria for this review is the preclinical study. The study design (randomized, cross-sectional, double-blinded), compound DXH regime, outcome measure of the study, and the efficacy were taken into consideration. The present review focused on the molecular targets, challenges, formulation development, comparison with some other drugs in terms of therapeutic benefits, and tolerance with the safety issue of DXH. It was found that DXH provides impactful relief from pain but still modification in the treatment strategies for NP is required.