“Participants were only required to have 1 month pain free before their current episode of spinal pain,” Sullivan and Ballantyne wrote. Sullivan is a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, and Ballantyne is a retired professor of anesthesiology and pain medicine, at the University of Washington. Ballantyne, who weren’t involved in the study. The pain treated might have been more chronic, recurring pain than the type caused by acute injury, according to a commentary on the study by Dr. One possibility is that the back or neck pain of the opioid group could have had more underlying factors than the authors considered - factors that have been known to respond poorly to opioid treatment, experts said. The study authors and experts who weren’t involved in the new study have theories on why opioids weren’t found to be more helpful than the placebo. “We also know that being prescribed opioid pain relievers even for a short period of time increases the risk of opioid misuse long term,” Lin said in a news release. ![]() The opioid group had worse mental health scores and more reports of nausea, dizziness and constipation than the placebo group. The authors also discovered that not only are opioids unlikely to alleviate back and neck pain, they also might cause harm even after short-term, sensible use. ![]() More people in the opioid group had ongoing pain at weeks 26 and 52 than in the placebo group. Six weeks into treatment, the average pain score was 2.78 in the opioid group and 2.25 in the placebo group, a difference that increased over time. The authors found that in terms of effects on back and neck pain, opioids weren’t any more helpful than the placebo. The care involved the doctor reassuring them and advising them to stay active, avoid bed rest and, if required, avoid other treatments including nonopioids. The other group was instructed to take a placebo pill.īoth groups were also given care tips from a doctor they were told to see weekly. Naloxone was used to prevent constipation, a common side effect of opioids, and therefore keep participants from figuring out which group they were in. The study participants were then randomly split into two groups: One group took a combination of naloxone and up to 20 milligrams of the opioid oxycodone per day for six weeks. At the beginning of the study, participants were about age 44 on average and had experienced at least moderately painful neck or lower back pain or both for 12 weeks or less. The patients had sought help for neck or lower back pain from primary care clinics or hospitals in Sydney between February 2016 and March 2022. How can people stay healthy in hot weather? Our medical analyst explainsīecause of scarce research, the scientists studied the effectiveness and safety of using opioids to treat a small cohort of 310 people. Tired young woman in a sports court FG Trade/E+/Getty Images Lin is senior author of the latest study published Wednesday in the journal The Lancet. Opioids for pain relief are recommended only once other pharmacological treatments haven’t worked or if a person can’t take them for personal reasons.ĭespite these guidelines and “there being no evidence of their efficacy in reducing pain, opioid pain relievers are still widely prescribed for people with lower back and neck pain in many countries,” said Christine Lin, a professor at the Institute for Musculoskeletal Health at the University of Sydney in Australia, in a news release. When it comes to treating this pain, physicians should cautiously limit patient use of opioids and restrict it to a short time period, the society’s clinical guidelines state. Low back pain is defined as acute when symptoms last for up to six weeks, and chronic when the pain lasts for more than 12 weeks, according to the North American Spine Society (PDF). ![]() ![]() In fact, lower back pain is globally the leading contributor to years lived with disability, and neck pain is the fourth, according to an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021. Opioid medications are one of the most typically prescribed treatments for the worldwide problem of low back pain - but they might not work, a new study has found.Įxperiencing pain in the neck and lower back is common.
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