Acetaminophen Ineffective for Back Pain, Knee/Hip OA
Acetaminophen (paracetamol, acetyl-para-aminophenol; APAP) was ineffective for low back pain and provided only clinically insignificant relief of hip or knee osteoarthritis (OA) pain while quadrupling the risk for liver function abnormalities, according to a systematic review and meta-analysis published March 31 by Australian researchers in the British Medical Journal. On the basis of this analysis, the researchers suggest that acetaminophen’s front-line place in OA and back pain clinical treatment guidelines should be reconsidered.
Edward Michna, MD, director of the Pain Trials Center at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, and member of the American Pain Society board of directors, told Medscape Medical News that the results are interesting, but subject to the limitations to meta-analysis, which is only as good as the quality of the original studies and may be biased by the limitation of the available studies published.
