Just 1 in 10 back pain treatments work, study says what to do instead

Chronic back pain is the most common type of pain, affecting around 16 million American adults — and now a new study has revealed some discouraging findings about potential treatments.Only around one in every 10 treatments was found to be effective in relieving lower back pain, according to a new study published in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine.Many of them are “barely better than a placebo” in terms of pain relief, as stated in a press release from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, Australia.“Our review did not find reliable evidence of large effects for any of the included treatments,” said lead study author Dr.Aidan Cashin, deputy director of the Centre for Pain IMPACT at Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA) and conjoint senior lecturer in the School of Health Sciences at UNSW Sydney.The researchers reviewed 301 randomized, controlled trials that included data on 56 non-surgical treatments for adults experiencing acute low back pain, chronic low back pain, or a combination of both types, comparing them to groups that received placebos.“Treatments included in the research were pharmacological, such as non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs – or NSAIDs – and muscle relaxants, but also non-pharmacological, like exercise and massage,” Cashin said.Ineffective treatments for acute low back pain included exercise, steroid injections, and paracetamol (acetaminophen), the study found.For chronic low back pain, antibiotics and anesthetics were also “unlikely to be suitable treatment options,” the study found.For acute low back pain, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) could be effective, the study found.For chronic low back pain, therapies including exercise, taping, spinal manipulation, antidepressants, and transient receptor potential vanilloid 1 (TRPV1) agonists may be effective — “however, those effects were small,” Cashin noted.The findings were “inconclusive” for many other treatments due to the “l...