For how we live.
Cochrane reviews found no trials specific to acute neck pain, and only moderate evidence that targeted exercise helps the chronic kind. Manipulation and mobilisation come out roughly even.
A Cochrane review found lumbar supports do not prevent back pain and their treatment value was unclear. A new French randomised trial found a soft belt added to usual care modestly improved pain and disability.
RelieVRx is an authorised virtual-reality therapeutic for chronic low back pain. Its trials show real improvement — but in a 1,067-person study the edge over a placebo headset was 0.4 points on a 10-point scale.
Two Cochrane reviews found that for ordinary acute low back pain, advice to rest in bed is slightly worse than advice to stay active. For sciatica, it makes little difference either way.
The beliefs — that Black patients' skin is thicker, their nerve endings less sensitive — predicted lower pain ratings and less accurate treatment recommendations for a Black patient in the same experiment.
An updated systematic review of 25 randomised trials found small effects, concentrated in neuropathic pain, alongside moderate to large increases in dizziness, sedation and nausea. Long-term data barely exist.
OPAL randomised 347 people in Australian primary care and emergency departments. At six weeks the opioid group's mean pain score was slightly worse than the placebo group's.
Pain medicine added a third mechanistic category in 2017 and has been arguing about it since. There is no test for it, the criteria work by exclusion, and the experts who wrote them say that is a problem.