Which Pills Should You Take to Beat Your Pain? We Present the Good Painkiller Guide

Migraine. Backache. Arthritis. But which tablet is the most suited to relieve your pain? Scientists have put together a unique league table of the best… and worst.

Nearly eight million Britons live with chronic pain, according to last week’s public health report by the Chief Medical Officer. Meanwhile, millions of others will suffer sporadically from acute pain.

But what to take for this pain? One of the challenges for patients and their doctors is that there is a wide range of analgesics – painkillers – to choose from. Should you opt for over-the-counter aspirin, paracetamol or ibuprofen, and, if so, what dosage? Or should you seek a prescription for something else?

Now pain experts at Oxford University have put together the first league table of common painkillers based on their effectiveness for treating moderate to severe acute pain.

Dr. Andrew Moore, consultant pain specialist at Oxford, explains: ‘To produce the league table, we looked at all the analgesics which have been tested in placebo-controlled trials.’ These trials involved more than 20,000 people.

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March 27, 2009