Lumbar pain: paracetamol alone is not enough
Many people suffer from back pain and lumbalgia. A recent meta-analysis has investigated which medicines help efficiently.
Which medication is helpful for back pain?
- For acute lumbago, the combination of NSAIDs and paracetamol helps best.
- NSAIDs alone also lead to an improvement in symptoms, but not to the same extent as simultaneous administration with paracetamol.
- Paracetamol by itself did not significantly reduce symptom burden.
- Muscle relaxants are also suitable.
Acute lumbago is often difficult to treat
Acute lumbago is a widespread disease - from which chronic pain often develops. One of the reasons for this is that the symptoms are not treated adequately.
Combinations deliver the best results
A recent meta-analysis investigated the question of which drugs actually help with acute lumbago and whether combinations of individual drugs are useful.
The results:
- Paracetamol alone did not improve the symptoms.
- NSAIDs usually help better than paracetamol.
- The combination of paracetamol and NSAIDs led to a more significant improvement in symptom burden than NSAIDs alone.
- Simultaneous administration of muscle relaxants and NSAIDs resulted in the greatest possible freedom from symptoms within one week.
Considerations for medical practice
The data show that combination therapy should be the treatment of choice for acute lumbago. If possible, pairing a muscle relaxant with an NSAID is recommended. Alternatively, NSAIDs can be combined with paracetamol.
- Baroncini A, Maffulli N, Al-Zyoud H, Bell A, Sevic A, Migliorini F. Nonopioid pharmacological management of acute low back pain: A level I of evidence systematic review. J Orthop Res. 2023 Feb 22. doi: 10.1002/jor.25508. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 36811209.