Interesting ... it's presented in the context of drugs for curing infections.<p>I wonder if this is being used for other drugs. My curiosity stems from personal experience: I had Migraine headaches from age 17 to about 35. I was put on ancient seizure medication that's common prescribed for Bipolar[0] because this doctor had three other patients that it nearly eliminated Migraine from. It was fall, a time when I'd get about one a week. After five days of taking it, I had my first Migraine ... if you could call it that -- I could only identify that it <i>was</i> a Migraine by the aura; the pain was about 10% what I'm used to).<p>Searching through the web, I found a forum that was filled with Migraine sufferers. Sure enough, there were a handful of people who <i>swore</i> by it. There were also a handful of people who it didn't work for. Looking at the more official sources, there was no indication that this drug could have <i>any</i> effect on Migraine; they listed all of the <i>other</i> off-label uses[1], but Migraine was not among them.<p>This medication had been in the news several times (and on the front page, here[2]) over the last few years and a year ago (or so), I looked it up on the "official sources", again. It now indicated that it was prescribed for Migraine.<p>It made me wonder ... how are things like that figured out/communicated down-stream? Is it entirely informally amongst doctors? I went to four different specialists before I found one who suggested this drug -- and he did so in a "half-hearted manner" not truly expecting it would work. It'd be nice if this was centrally tracked/managed as it might surface both "new uses for old drugs" and "new problems with old drugs."<p>[0] Which I do not have.<p>[1] It's rarely, if ever, prescribed for what it was originally approved for.<p>[2] It's Depakote, I'm not being cagey for nefarious purposes, I just didn't want this to be a drug advertisement.