Study Finds Opioid Medication Effective for Chronic Pain
May 03, 2018
By Pat Anson, Editor
Opioids have been used for thousands of years to provide relief from pain. But are they an effective treatment? Are they worth the risk of addiction? And do they improve quality of life?
Millions of chronic pain patients who use prescription opioids so that they can work, sleep, bathe and do simple household chores would quickly answer “Yes” to those questions.
But that’s a radical concept in an age of anti-opioid hysteria and propaganda. Prominent anti-opioid activists insist that “opioids are ineffective or can worsen both the pain and the long-term outcome." And the CDC's opioid prescribing guideline tells us there is “insufficient evidence to determine long-term benefits of opioid therapy for chronic pain.”
Except now there’s a review that says opioids are effective and the evidence was there all along.
Researchers at Brown University and Tufts University School of Medicine analyzed 15 clinical studies performed for the Food and Drug Administration that looked at the effectiveness of opioids in treating chronic non-cancer pain. Their findings were just published in the Journal of Pain Research.
“The recent claims that opioids lack efficacy for chronic pain have created controversy among physicians, prescribers, regulators, scientists, and the general public,” wrote lead author Nathaniel Katz, MD, president of Analgesic Solutions and a professor of anesthesia at Tufts University.
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“This review was, therefore, performed in order to gather together the key evidence to facilitate understanding opioid efficacy within the paradigm of FDA studies required for approval, and to perform a meta-analysis in order to quantify opioid efficacy for chronic pain.”
‘Ample Evidence’ Opioids Work
The authors are careful to note that they did not try to study or minimize the risks of opioids but were simply trying to reach “an accurate assessment of their benefits.” The 15 placebo controlled studies they reviewed evaluated the effectiveness of hydrocodone, oxycodone, tramadol and other opioids for up to 3 months.
What did they find?
“There is an ample evidence base supporting the efficacy of opioid analgesics for at least 3 months’ duration,” Katz wrote. “This evidence base is at least as large as that for any other class of analgesics, and analysis of responders demonstrates clinically meaningful improvements.”
Nearly two-thirds of the patients (63%) who participated in the 15 studies demonstrated “a clinically meaningful response” to opioids as a treatment for chronic pain. Their physical function only improved marginally, and researchers say there was no positive or negative effect on the patients’ mood. Interestingly, adverse effects were similar in the patients who took opioids and those who were given placebos.
In short, the authors found no reason to abandon opioids as a treatment for chronic pain.