According to the latest expert reports, it seems that Ibuprofen and more NSAIDs are surrounded by more and more controversy these days. Check out the latest reports that have been just revealed.
Ibuprofen makes the news again
As you probably know by now, experts have been recommending nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, which include Ibuprofen, for decades. Its use? To relieve acute inflammation.
However, it is also extremely important that we note the fact that such a short-term relief that the medicine can bring is able to interfere with the body’s natural healing process and this could bring chronic pain for patients who take it.
Pain from a minor injury, such as a sprained ankle or thrown-out back, can become chronic and persist beyond the expected healing time.
“[The] standard medical care for this type of pain is probably making matters worse, is what the research suggests,” Jeffrey Mogil, a neuroscientist at McGill University stated not too long ago.
As experts have noted for a really long time now, injuries are triggering inflammation in the body, and this happens for a really clear reason.
A study published in Science Translational Medicine observed 98 patients suffering from lower back pain over a period of three months.
During this period, half of the participants fully recovered while the other half developed chronic lower back pain. The researchers utilized RNA sequencing to compare the activity levels of immune cells in both groups.
Neutrophils, the immune cells that play a significant role in fighting infection and repairing tissue damage, have also been found to play a role in remaining pain-free by researchers.
Based on the findings of the researchers, individuals who experience chronic pain initially exhibited lower levels of inflammatory neutrophil activity and eventually had little to no activity in the cells responsible for causing inflammation.
Conversely, the genes of patients who had recovered from chronic pain were highly active in cells associated with inflammation.
“Neutrophils rush in pretty early after some sort of injury, causing a process that ends up preventing chronic pain,” said Mr. Mogil, a senior author of the paper, “and you probably shouldn’t block it.” In other words, your body knows very well what it’s doing and you should probably let it do its job.