Placebo rivals paracetamol in study

[CLICKHEREx]

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/07/24/placebo-rivals-paracetamol-study


AAP
24 Jul 2014

Paracetamol, the first-choice lower-back pain killer, worked no better than dummy drugs administered in a trial of more than 1600 people suffering from the condition, researchers say.

In fact, the median recovery time for those on placebo was a day shorter than that for trial subjects given real medicine, they wrote in The Lancet medical journal.

"Our findings suggest that ... paracetamol does not affect recovery time compared with placebo in low-back pain, and question the universal endorsement of paracetamol in this patient group," the Australian team concluded.

"Paracetamol also had no effect on pain, disability, function, global symptom change, sleep or quality of life."

Lower-back pain is the leading cause of disability in the world, and paracetamol is "universally" recommended as the treatment of first choice, said a statement carried by The Lancet on Wednesday.

The Paracetamol for Low-Back Pain Study (PACE) divided 1652 individuals with acute pain from 235 clinics in Sydney into three trial groups.

One received regular paracetamol doses, the other used the drug as needed, and the third was given placebo pills.

Recovery was defined as seven consecutive days of 0 or 1 pain intensity on a 0-10 scale.

"Median time to recovery was 17 days in the regular paracetamol group, 17 days in the as-needed paracetamol group, and 16 days in the placebo group," said the statement.

All patients were given high-quality advice and reassurance, and the findings suggest these may be more important in lower-back pain management than drug therapy, said the authors.

"Our results convey the need to reconsider the universal endorsement of paracetamol in clinical practice guidelines as first-line care for low-back pain."

A potential limitation of the study was that some participants used other treatments.

In a comment also carried by The Lancet, Bart Koes and Wendy Enthoven from the Universal Medical Center in Rotterdam applauded the team "for tackling this research question on a topic that has been without debate and evidence for such a long time".

But they cautioned that guidelines should not be changed on the basis of a single trial.

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Called acetaminophen in the US, it's overuse / abuse is thought to be the main cause of people needing liver transplants.

Interestingly, antidepressants also only perform slightly better than placebos in double blind studies, yet Big Pharma can use that fact to justify a $ multibillion industry, despite their high incidence of side effects such as sexual dysfunction, which can sometimes (admittedly rarely) be permanent. http://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110921032742AAZn9qX https://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20140615011107AAPCuGt & https://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20140514083426AARwQqC refer.

[nut]

I've got a l5 disc problem and apart from tramadol which does help,the doc still try's to ram panadol osteo down my throat telling me how much it does help,even though I tell him doesn't.i don't bother with it at all and don't even get me started on the anti deps,they caused me only problems,no benefits.

[paradox]

paracetamol is good now & again for a headache, thats about it if you ask me, should be used very sparingly anyway, makes mince meat of your kidneys.. if you're using it multiple times on a daily basis you'd probably be much better off with an opiate addiction