Is paracetamol a back ache drug or just placebo?

A new study has revealed paracetamol is no better than Placebo as it does not help in speedy recovery from severe lower back pain or improving pain levels, function, sleep, or quality of life.

Low-back pain has been the leading cause of disability worldwide. National clinical guidelines universally recommend paracetamol as the first choice analgesic for acute low-back pain, despite the fact that no previous studies have provided robust evidence that it was effective in people with low-back pain.

Dr Christopher Williams from the George Institute for Global Health at the University of Sydney, Australia said that simple analgesics such as paracetamol might not be of primary importance in the management of acute lower back pain.

The results suggested that they need to reconsider the universal recommendation to provide paracetamol as a first-line treatment for low-back pain, although understanding why paracetamol works for other pain states but not low-back pain would help direct future treatments.

Bart Koes and Wendy Enthoven from Erasmus MC, University Medical Center in Rotterdam, Netherlands said that furthermore, efforts to establish if prescription of other simple analgesics has additional benefit to advice and reassurance of the favorable prognosis for acute low-back pain would be welcomed.

The study is published in The Lancet.