Acetaminophen, ibuprofen, and other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) ease chronic pain in the back, knees or hips better than opioids, a U.S. experiment suggests.
Opioids were no better than these other drugs at reducing how much pain interfered with daily activities like walking, working, sleeping or enjoying life, researchers reported in JAMA, on March 6.
“We already knew opioids were more dangerous than other treatment options because they put people at risk for accidental death and addiction,” said lead study author Dr. Erin Krebs of the Minneapolis VA Health Care System and the University of Minnesota.
“This study shows that extra risk doesn’t come with any extra benefit,” Krebs said by email.
U.S. deaths from opioids like heroin, oxycodone, hydrocodone, and methadone have more than quadrupled since 1999, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Today, more than six in 10 drug overdose deaths involve opioids.
The CDC has urged physicians to use opioids as a last resort after talking to patients about how exercise or physical therapy can help ease symptoms, and first prescribing less addictive drugs for pain including acetaminophen (Tylenol) and NSAIDs such as aspirin, ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin) and naproxen (Aleve).
NSAIDs carry their own risks, especially at high doses, including the potential for internal bleeding, kidney damage, and heart attacks. But they aren’t addictive.
Participants were 58 years old on average and most were men. Back pain was their most common complaint, affecting 156 patients, or 65 percent. The rest had either hip or knee osteoarthritis pain.
People in the opioid group started therapy with fast-acting morphine, a combination of hydrocodone and acetaminophen, or immediate release oxycodone. If that wasn’t successful, patients next got long-acting morphine or oxycodone, and then doctors tried fentanyl patches.
In the non-opioid group, patients first got acetaminophen and NSAIDs. If those options didn’t help enough, doctors tried options like the nerve pain drug gabapentin (Neurontin) and topical painkillers like lidocaine, followed by the nerve pain drug pregabalin (Lyrica) and tramadol, an opiate painkiller.
Researchers asked participants to rate how much pain interfered with their lives at the start of the study, and again 12 months later.
By this measure, both groups improved equally over the course of the year, based on a 10-point scale with higher scores indicating worse impairment.
With opioids, scores declined from an average of 5.4 at the start of the study to 3.4 a year later. With other drugs, scores dropped from 5.5 to 3.3.
Patients also rated pain intensity on a 10-point scale with higher scores indicating more severe symptoms, and non-opioid drugs worked slightly better on this measure.
In both groups, patients initially rated their pain intensity at 5.4, but scores dropped to just 4.0 with opioids and fell to 3.5 on the other drugs.
One limitation of the study is that people knew which medications they were prescribed, which might affect how patients reported their own pain severity and daily functioning, the authors note.
“There is increasing evidence that non-opioid pain relievers are just as (if not more) effective than opioids for chronic non-cancer pain,” Seamans said by email.
“Prior to beginning opioids, patients not responsive to these non-opioid medications should ideally be evaluated by a pain specialist before starting chronic opioid therapy,” Brummett said by email.
