THE ESSENTIAL
- Anti-inflammatories can be used to relieve headaches, toothaches, back pain, sprains, tendinitis or painful periods.
- The findings were backed up by a UK cohort of 500,000 adults, which showed that people taking anti-inflammatories were more likely to suffer from pain two to ten years later.
“The transition from acute pain to chronic pain is critically important but not well understood,” said researchers from McGill University in Montreal (Canada). This is why they decided to carry out a study, of which the results were published in the journal Science Translational Medicine. As part of this work, the scientists first analyzed the pathophysiological mechanisms underlying the transition from acute back pain to chronic low back pain in humans.
The role of neutrophils in pain resolution
To carry out their research, the authors recruited 98 people with acute low back pain. They asked them to take anti-inflammatories and followed them for three months. The researchers then carried out tests to assess their pain and discovered that neutrophils, which are a type of white blood cells that help the body fight infections, played an important role in resolving the pain.
“Analysis of immune cells from subjects with low back pain showed that neutrophil activation-dependent inflammatory genes were upregulated in subjects with resolved pain, whereas no changes were observed in patients with persistent pain, have developed the researchers.
Blocking inflammation can lead to chronic pain
The scientists then studied the mechanisms underlying this transition in mice. “Although short-term, treatment with a steroid or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) also resulted in prolongation of pain in mice. Such prolongation was not observed with other analgesics”, can we read in the study. According to the results, blocking inflammation delayed pain resolution in rodents.
Thus, the researchers concluded that there was a high risk of persistence of pain in patients taking anti-inflammatories. Despite analgesic efficacy in the early stages, management of acute inflammation may be counterproductive in the long term in people with low back pain. “For several decades, standard medical practice has been to treat pain with anti-inflammatory drugs. But we’ve found that this short-term solution can lead to longer-term problems. Perhaps it’s time to reconsider the how we deal with acute pain”, said Jeffrey Mogil, author of the work, in a statement.