What are Topamax's FDA Approved Uses:
Topamax is used by itself or with other meds to treat a variety of forms of epilepsy. These include:
Simple partial seizures - you're still awake (more or less), with symptoms such as one or two limbs spazzing out or wacky visual or other sensory distortions. Think Alice in Wonderland, as Lewis Carroll must have had some serious temporal lobe issues. The fist link will take you to a better explanation. For a really detailed explanation of what a simple partial seizure is, click here.
Complex partial seziures - the people around you think you're just acting out to get attention. In reality you have no control over what's happening. Again, click there for the basics, click here for what neurologists think about this type of seizure.
Generalized tonic-clonic - the classic definition of a seizure, when you're completely flopping all over the place like a fish out of water. For the neurologist's view, click here.
Lennox-Gastaut syndrome. If your child has this, my heart goes out to you. If you don't know what it is, consider yourself fortunate. See also Keppra, which has tested well for Lennox-Gastaut.
Topamax is also approved to treat migraines. And please, people, a migraine isn't a really bad headache. If you aren't brought to the ground by the nausea, the sensitivity to light and sound, and the jackhammers that have taken up residence in your head for at least a couple of hours, you don't have a freaking migraine.
What are the Off-Label Uses of Topamax:
Topamax is also used for:
Adjunctive treatment for adults with Bipolar Disorder
and Adjunctive treatment of children and adolescents with Bipolar Disorder. so when used with other meds it tests well.
In Monotherapy for Bipolar Disorder, and another study here it's not that great used by itself for random bipolar patients, but more about that in the comments section.
Cluster headaches. Although from that study and some case histories it looks like you want to try the standard treatments first. Topamax will do its usual thing of working great for half the people and really messing up the other half.
Eating Disorders. See also the abstracts for these two more recent studies here and here, both of which confirm the first.
Vanity Dieting, a.k.a. Topamax for weight loss when you're not mentally interesting, where it failed utterly in the two clinical trials for dieting and it continues to mess people up to use it for dieting purposes.
Fibromyalgia - anecdotal evidence only. I don't have enough to tell you one way or the other.
Depression (when used for obesity).
PTSD.
Alcoholism.
Sleep Disorders, including combined sleep-eating disorders.
Autism, mostly anecdotal evidence only, including mine, and usually dealing with sensory integration. So don't force it down your kids' throats. It's an adult thing. Either it helps deal with sensory integration or it doesn't.
Healing old external scars (such as from self-injury). Mixed reports from anecdotal evidence, but mostly positive.