Placebo cured back pain as well as opioids
Scientists at the University of Sydney have found that placebos work just as well as drug therapy with dangerous addictive drugs. This was demonstrated by the world's first study of the effect of opioids on acute pain in the lower spine and neck.Kathleen Jones, a researcher at the University of Sydney's Faculty of Medicine and Health, and colleagues conducted a three-way, blind, randomized study on a group of 174 subjects who took opioid painkillers and 173 participants in a control group who took a placebo. In the first group, the mean pain value was 2.69, while in the second group it was 2.25. The subjects in the first group were much more likely to complain about side effects associated with taking narcotic painkillers.
It becomes clear that there is a need to reconsider the approach to therapy with serious medications that can cause addiction, the authors of the study believe. Although similar studies have been conducted before on patients with chronic pain, there is very little data in the case of acute pain. That, however, does not prevent the widespread use of opioid-based analgesics, even without scientific justification. This controversial "therapy," once started, then tends to continue throughout life.
The leader in the number of medical opioid analgesics dispensed is the United States. This leads to sad statistics: from 1999 to 2012, the number of deaths from medication overdoses rose from 1.4 per 100,000 population to 5.1, which is more than threefold.
The pain rating system common in Western countries involves a scale of 0 to 10. Values of 1 to 3 indicate mild pain, while 7 to 10 are severe pain that makes it impossible to perform normal daily activities.