Detailed guides to painful problems, treatments & more

Topical anti-inflammatories are effective, safe

 •  • by Paul Ingraham
Get posts in your inbox:
Weekly nuggets of pain science news and insight, usually 100-300 words, with the occasional longer post. The blog is the “director’s commentary” on the core content of PainScience.com: a library of major articles and books about common painful problems and popular treatments. See the blog archives or updates for the whole site.

Fresh science! Multiple studies have concluded that topical anti-inflammatories are both effective and safe for osteoarthritis. That’s topical, not oral — a completely different beast. This new paper (Zeng et al) reviews the results of 43 studies and concludes that “diclofenac patches may be the most effective topical NSAID for pain relief. No serious gastrointestinal and renal adverse events were observed in trials or the general population.”

That’s the science. Now for a useless but encouraging anecdote …

A few weeks ago, I had my first personal experience with dramatic relief from Voltaren Gel (topical diclofenac). It’s not the first time I have found it useful, but it was the first time it was amazing. I’d been having some unexplained knee pain intermittently for several weeks when it kicked up a notch or two and became constant and even started waking me up at night. When I finally remembered to try Voltaren Gel — I’m not sure what took me so long — things were bad enough that it was going to be obvious if it worked. And it was! After many days of constant discomfort ranging from 3-6 on a 10-scale, it just ended: half an hour after applying the stuff, I simply didn’t have that problem anymore. Hallelujah! It’s been weeks since then with no relapse. Although the pain was not terrible, this is actually one of the clearest examples of pain relief from any treatment that I’ve ever enjoyed.

For more information about this stuff, see Voltaren Gel: Does It Work?.

PainSci Member Login » Submit your email to unlock member content. If you can’t remember/access your registration email, please contact me. ~ Paul Ingraham, PainSci Publisher