Clinical Manifestation of Acute, Subacute, and Chronic Low Back Pain in Different Age Groups: Low Back Pain in 35,446 Patients.

BACKGROUND: Low back pain (LBP) is a major healthcare problem causing tremendous economic costs. METHODS: Clinical manifestation of LBP was characterized in 35,446 patients. We focused on the comparison of the acute, subacute, and chronic LBP stage with regard to patients' ages, based on epidemiologic and clinical questionnaires (eg, painDETECT Questionnaire, Pain Disability Index), pain intensity, pain descriptors, and functional impairment. RESULTS: We found that neuropathic components were most frequent in chronic LBP patients at the ages of 51 to 60 years. Elderly LBP patients showed a decrease in neuropathic and an increase in nociceptive pain. The most frequently reported pain descriptors were "pressure pain" and "pain attacks" through all stages of LBP, whereas "burning" and "prickling" were most frequent in the chronic stage. Patients after back surgery presented neuropathic pain symptoms most frequently and had the highest amount of pain medication intake. CONCLUSIONS: Burning and prickling were revealed as possible indicators for LBP chronicity. Combined with pain attacks and pressure pain, these 4 pain descriptors might be a promising adjunct to pain intensity in terms of outcome parameters for future LBP studies. The decrease of neuropathic pain syndromes in the elderly might be explained by degenerative processes. The presented work provides important insights on LBP management in the acute, subacute, and chronic stages.

Use of a glycosamine sulfate for patients with osteoarthritis and a comorbidity with high risk of the side effects from NSAIDS.

The literature review is devoted to the peculiarities of treating co-morbid patients with acute conditions of chronic pain. The proved effect of NSAIDS must always correlate with the side effect risk. Patented microcrystalline glucosamine sulfate (pCGS) is likely to have an effect similar to NSAIDS because it can cause decrease of COX-2 and PGE2 gene expression. Randomized trials show, that patented microcrystalline glucosamine sulfate can impede complex structure changes and have a positive effect on the symptoms at the early stage of knee OA. Pharmacokinetic evidence demonstrates that repeated oral intake of microcrystalline glucosamine sulfate can cause the increase of GS in synovial fluid. It is necessary to monitor OA biomarkers during microcrystalline GS treatment, recommend appropriate physical exercise and study the neuropathic component of chronic pain.

[Osteoarthritis and geriatric syndromes]. / Osteoartrit i geriatricheskie sindromy.

AIM: To study the geriatric status of patients with osteoarthritis (OA) older than 60 years depending on the severity of frailty. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The study included 201 patients with OA (mean age 75.84±8.09 years). The patients were divided into 3 groups: patients without frailty, patients with prefrailty and patients with frailty. Along with clinical examination, the risk of falls, pain intensity, the Charlson comorbidity index and the number of geriatric syndromes were calculated. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: With the increase of frailty, the number of patients experiencing difficulties in movement increases. The physical activity of the patients gradually reduces with the appearance of prefrailty and significantly reduces in OA. At the same time, there is the increase in dependence on outside help, the decrease in IADL and walking speed. The most common geriatric syndromes in patients with OA are sensory deficits, chronic pain syndrome and falls. The neuropathic component of pain is diagnosed in every tenth patient with OA without frailty and in every third patient with OA and frailty. In light of results obtained in the study, the authors suggest detailed recommendations for treatment of patients.

Efficacy and tolerability balance of oxycodone/naloxone and tapentadol in chronic low back pain with a neuropathic component: a blinded end point analysis of randomly selected routine data from 12-week prospective open-label observations.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the benefit-risk profile (BRP) of oxycodone/naloxone (OXN) and tapentadol (TAP) in patients with chronic low back pain (cLBP) with a neuropathic component (NC) in routine clinical practice. METHODS: This was a blinded end point analysis of randomly selected 12-week routine/open-label data of the German Pain Registry on adult patients with cLBP-NC who initiated an index treatment in compliance with the current German prescribing information between 1st January and 31st October 2015 (OXN/TAP, n=128/133). Primary end point was defined as a composite of three efficacy components (≥30% improvement of pain, pain-related disability, and quality of life each at the end of observation vs baseline) and three tolerability components (normal bowel function, absence of either central nervous system side effects, and treatment-emergent adverse event [TEAE]-related treatment discontinuation during the observation period) adopted to reflect BRP assessments under real-life conditions. RESULTS: Demographic as well as baseline and pretreatment characteristics were comparable for the randomly selected data sets of both index groups without any indicators for critical selection biases. Treatment with OXN resulted formally in a BRP noninferior to that of TAP and showed a significantly higher primary end point response vs TAP (39.8% vs 25.6%, odds ratio: 1.93; P=0.014), due to superior analgesic effects. Between-group differences increased with stricter response definitions for all three efficacy components in favor of OXN: ≥30%/≥50%/≥70% response rates for OXN vs TAP were seen for pain intensity in 85.2%/67.2%/39.1% vs 83.5%/54.1%/15.8% (P= ns/0.031/<0.001), for pain-related disability in 78.1%/64.8%/43.8% vs 66.9%/50.4%/24.8% (P=0.043/0.018/0.001), and for quality of life in 76.6%/68.0%/50.0% vs 63.9%/54.1%/34.6% (P=0.026/0.022/0.017). Overall, OXN vs TAP treatments were well tolerated, and proportions of patients who either maintained a normal bowel function (68.0% vs 72.2%), reported no central nervous system side effects (91.4% vs 89.5%), or completed the 12-week evaluation period without any TEAE-related treatment discontinuations (93.0% vs 92.5%) were similar for both index medications (P= ns for each comparison). CONCLUSION: In daily practice, the BRP of OXN proved to be noninferior to that of TAP in patients with cLBP-NC, but showed a superior efficacy if stricter analgesic response definitions were evaluated.

Tapentadol in the management of chronic low back pain: a novel approach to a complex condition?

Chronic pain affects approximately 1 in 5 people in Europe, and around half of sufferers receive inadequate pain management. The most common location is the lower back. Pharmacological treatment of this condition is challenging because of the range of causative mechanisms and the difficulty of balancing analgesic efficacy and tolerability. An international panel of clinical pain specialists met in September, 2009, to discuss the treatment of chronic low back pain, and to review preclinical and clinical data relating to the new analgesic, tapentadol. A lack of consensus exists on the best treatment for low back pain. The range of regularly prescribed pharmacological agents extends from nonopioids (paracetamol, NSAIDs, and COX-2 inhibitors) to opioids, antidepressants and anticonvulsants. Pain relief may be compromised, however, by an undetected neuropathic component or intolerable side effects. Treatment is potentially life-long and effective analgesics are urgently needed, with demonstrable long-term safety. Combining separate agents with different mechanisms of action could overcome the limitations of present pharmacological therapy, but clinical evidence for this approach is currently lacking. Tapentadol combines µ-opioid agonism with noradrenaline reuptake inhibition in a single molecule. There is strong evidence of synergistic antinociception between these two mechanisms of action. In preclinical and clinical testing, tapentadol has shown efficacy against both nociceptive and neuropathic pain. Preclinical data indicate that tapentadol's µ-opioid agonism makes a greater contribution to analgesia in acute pain, while noradrenaline reuptake inhibition makes a greater contribution in chronic neuropathic pain models. Tapentadol also produces fewer adverse events than oxycodone at equianalgesic doses, and thus may have a 'µ-sparing effect'. Current evidence indicates that tapentadol's efficacy/tolerability ratio may be better than those of classical opioids. However, further research is needed to establish its role in pain management.