How We Treat Acute Pain Could Be Wrong
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In a surprising discovery that flies in the face of conventional medicine, McGill University researchers report that treating pain with anti-inflammatory medication, like ibuprofen or aspirin, may promote pain in the long term. The paper, published in Science Translational Medicine, suggests that inflammation, a normal part of injury recovery, helps resolve acute pain and prevents it from becoming chronic. Blocking that inflammation may interfere with this process, leading to harder-to-treat pain.
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@gajra Wanting to know why pain goes away for some but drags on (and on) for others, the researchers looked at pain mechanisms in both humans and mice. They found that a type of white blood cell known as a neutrophil seems to play a key role.