Placebo as effective as paracetamol for lower back pain
The Australian study of 1,652 patients, which questioned the “universal recommendation” of paracetamol as the primary choice for acute lower-back pain, found that the analgesic did not reduce recovery time when compared to placebo tablets
Paracetamol is no better for treating lower back pain than placebo, a study has suggested.
The Australian study of 1,652 patients, which questioned the "universal recommendation" of paracetamol as the primary choice for acute lower back pain, found that the analgesic did not reduce recovery time when compared to placebo tablets.
The average recovery time in patients taking an average daily paracetamol dose of 2,660mg over three months was 17 days, compared to 16 days for those taking a placebo, according to the study published in the Lancet last week (July 24).
Paracetamol was also found to have no effect on sleep quality and quality of life in the patients who took part in the study between 2009 and 2013, said the study's authors from the universities of Sydney, New South Wales and Newcastle, Australia.
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Paracetamol did not affect recovery time when compared to placebos in this study but all patients included recovered at a quicker rate than typically reported among those treated with acute back pain. The authors suggested that this could be due to the high quality of medical advice that the study's participants had received and called for more research into whether "advice and reassurance" were more effective treatments than analgesics. |
As part of the study, funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia and drug manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline, patients were reviewed by a clinician in their first week, who reinforced the need to adhere to the treatment, and recorded follow-up data after two, four and 12 weeks. Around 84 per cent of participants in each group had recovered by the twelth week and 74 per cent were satisfied with their treatment, the authors said.
Accepted guidelines that endorsed paracetamol for lower back pain - the leading cause of disability worldwide - were based on "scarce evidence", the authors said. The new research "called into question" using the drug to treat the condition but the findings should be replicated before the treatment was "completely dismissed", they added.
"The results suggest we need to reconsider the universal recommendation to provide paracetamol as a first-line treatment for lower back pain, although understanding why paracetamol works for other pain states would help direct future treatments," said the study's lead author Christopher Williams of the George Institute and the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Sydney.
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