Research Paper Title
Efficacy and Safety of Paracetamol for Spinal Pain and Osteoarthritis: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Randomised Placebo Controlled Trials.
Objective
To investigate the efficacy and safety of paracetamol (acetaminophen) in the management of spinal pain and osteoarthritis of the hip or knee.
Design
Systematic review and meta-analysis.
Results
12 reports (13 randomised trials) were included. There was “high quality” evidence that paracetamol is ineffective for reducing pain intensity (weighted mean difference −0.5, 95% confidence interval −2.9 to 1.9) and disability (0.4, −1.7 to 2.5) or improving quality of life (0.4, −0.9 to 1.7) in the short term in people with low back pain.
For hip or knee osteoarthritis there was “high quality” evidence that paracetamol provides a significant, although not clinically important, effect on pain (−3.7, −5.5 to −1.9) and disability (−2.9, −4.9 to −0.9) in the short term. The number of patients reporting any adverse event (risk ratio 1.0, 95% confidence interval 0.9 to 1.1), any serious adverse event (1.2, 0.7 to 2.1), or withdrawn from the study because of adverse events (1.2, 0.9 to 1.5) was similar in the paracetamol and placebo groups.
Patient adherence to treatment (1.0, 0.9 to 1.1) and use of rescue medication (0.7, 0.4 to 1.3) was also similar between groups. “High quality” evidence showed that patients taking paracetamol are nearly four times more likely to have abnormal results on liver function tests (3.8, 1.9 to 7.4), but the clinical importance of this effect is uncertain.
Conclusions
Paracetamol is ineffective in the treatment of low back pain and provides minimal short term benefit for people with osteoarthritis. These results support the reconsideration of recommendations to use paracetamol for patients with low back pain and osteoarthritis of the hip or knee in clinical practice guidelines.
Reference
Machado, G.C., Maher, C.G., Ferreira, P.H., Pinheiro, M.B., Lin, C-W.C., Day, R.O., McLachlan, A.J. & Ferreira, M.L. (2015) Efficacy and Safety of Paracetamol for Spinal Pain and Osteoarthritis: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Randomised Placebo Controlled Trials. British Medical Journal. Published 31 March 2015, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.h1225.
