Common pain meds will most likely not supply the pain relief you are looking for, says a new study. The study found that a single dose of common medicines like aspirin or acetaminophen only left about one-third of people experiencing good pain relief, reports MSNBC.
The study is published in the September issue of the journal The Cochrane Library.
The study looked at 350 previous trials of pain medications that included 45,000 people in total and nearly 50 drugs or drug combinations were evaluated for their ability to relieve pain at specific doses.
According to MSNBC, good relief was defined in the study as a feeling that the pain was cut by half for four to six hours.
Results showed that 14 percent of patients who took codeine (60 mg) said they experienced good relief. Meanwhile with drugs like etoricoxib at 120 mg and acetaminophen (500 mg) plus ibuprofen (200 mg), 70 percent or more said they experienced good pain relief.
There was no drug that worked well for all of the patients involved, and more than half of patients did not experience good pain relief, research showed.
Study researcher Andrew Moore, a pain researcher at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, told MyHealthNewsDaily, “This is the rock on which you can build good pain-relieving strategies for your hospital, for your patients, for your family, for yourself.”
Although the researchers believe that the effect of any drug will vary depending on the individual and the type of pain, they believe the study may help doctors better decide which medication to use for patients.
