PARACETAMOL painkillers are no better than a placebo for speeding the recovery of people suffering lower back pain, a study has found.
Doctors should now look at whether the over-the-counter drug should be the first choice treatment for people with the hugely debilitating condition, said scientists behind the research.
The study of more than 1,500 patients, published in The Lancet, found patients given the common analgesic recovered no more quickly than those given a useless substitute.
Dr Christopher Williams, of the George Institute for Global Health at Sydney University, Australia, who led the research, said: "Simple analgesics such as paracetamol might not be of primary importance in the management of acute lower back pain.
"The results suggest we need to reconsider the universal recommendation to provide paracetamol as a first-line treatment for low-back pain, although understanding why paracetamol works for other pain states but not low-back pain would help direct future treatments."
The study involved 1,652 people with acute low-back pain at 235 care centres in Sydney.
They randomly received one of three treatments, up to four weeks of paracetamol in regular doses, paracetamol as they needed it or a placebo.
They all also received "advice and reassurance" and follow-up assistance for three months.
All three groups returned similar figures for recovery time, the study found, with the placebo group having a median recovery time of 16 days, a day faster than the other two groups.
Dr Williams also suggested that given his team's results, it was worth looking at whether advice and reassurance for sufferers was a more effective form of treatment than drugs.
The research, funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia and GlaxoSmithKline, was welcomed by other scientists who called for more research to be carried out.
Writing in The Lancet, Bart Koes and Wendy Enthoven, from the Erasmus University Medical Centre in Rotterdam, said: "Although the findings from this high-quality trial are clear, the content of guidelines should not be changed on the basis of a single trial; more robust and consistent evidence, including verification of the results in other populations, is needed.
"Furthermore, efforts to establish if prescription of other simple analgesics has additional benefit to advice and reassurance of the favourable prognosis for acute low-back pain are very welcome."
Professor Sallie Lamb, director of the Oxford Clinical Trials Unit, said: "This study may cause us to reconsider the way we treat patients here with acute low back pain."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article