At back pain and the lower back are usually treated with steroid and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. However, as an international group of scientists led by specialists from McGill University (Canada) has established, it is the inflammation that accompanies the pain syndrome that helps to gradually get rid of it.
Artificially reducing inflammation with medication increases the chances that the pain will become chronic. Article published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
The researchers monitored neutrophils (immune blood cells that fight the spread of infection and are especially active in acute inflammation) in 98 patients with acute low back pain for three months.
It turned out that in those patients who recovered from pain during these three months, powerful changes occurred in the genes of neutrophils. Such changes were not observed in patients who continued to suffer from pain. Experiments in mice have also shown that blocking the activity of neutrophils contributes to a tenfold increase in the duration of pain compared to the norm.
This allowed scientists to conclude that it is neutrophils that play a key role in reducing pain. “Neutrophils dominate the early stages of inflammation and set the stage for repair of damaged tissues.
Inflammation does not start in vain, and it seems that it is dangerous to interfere with this process, ”explained one of the authors of the study, Professor Jeffrey Mogil. Thus, the use of steroidal and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as dexamethasone and diclofenac, which alleviate the condition of patients at an early stage, generally has the opposite effect, provoking the transition of acute pain into chronic pain.
These findings were backed up by an analysis of data on half a million people in the UK who suffered from low back pain. For those who took anti-inflammatory drugs, the chances of continuing to suffer from pain two years and even ten years later turned out to be much higher than those who used other drugs to alleviate their condition. analgesics.
“Our results suggest that it is time to rethink the treatment of acute low back pain. Fortunately, you can get rid of it not only with the help of drugs that interfere with the inflammation process, ”said Mogila’s co-author, Italian physician Massimo Allegri.
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