The new back pain drug could be “a gamechanger” | Backache

Millions of people around the world with serious back pain can be able to obtain relief A new drug This uses antibiotics rather than painkillers to face the condition.

The doctors who tested the drug have said that it could be “a gamechanger” for the one out of four people whose bass of the back is caused by an infection rather than by a muscle or spinal problem.

An initial experimentation of the drug has discovered that you are out of 10 of those who took it have undergone great benefits, including a significant decline in the pain and disability they had previously suffered.

The drug, called PP353, is being developed by Persica Pharmaceuticals, a biotechnological society based in Kent. He organized the process in collaboration with six Hospitals of the NHS in England and Wales.

Dr. Shiva Tripathi, consultant for the pain of the NHS and the investigator of the process, said that if the drug is approved by the regulators and becomes available it would be “a gamechanger for chronic back pain at levels similar to similar ones to those (as) antibiotics made a difference. GameChanger for the future.”

However, the controlled randomized study involved only 44 patients – 22 in Great Britain and 22 in Spain, Denmark and New Zealand – therefore PP353 will have to undergo further studies and be approved by the medicinal Watchdogs, before doctors can offer patients to relieve their symptoms.

Patients all had a severe back pain for at least six months and in some cases more than five years, which had not responded to conventional treatment, such as painkillers.

Persica said that a great advantage of their treatment is that the patient has two injections four days later rather than undergoing surgery or taking tablets for a long time. Recent Research found That most of the 56 ways of trying to relieve the back pain that researchers have studied – ranging from massage and acupuncture to painkillers and physiotherapy – has brought little or no real relief.

PP353 is a combination of three substances already widely used in medicine: Linezolid, an antibiotic; Iohexol, a contrast or coloring agent; It is a thermosensitive gel. It is injected into the lower back to ban an infection that developed around the discs.

Steve Ruston, CEO of the company, said: “Our first experimentation as a patient has produced truly positive results. (Has produced) significant reductions in pain and disability and (patients also obtained) clinically significant benefits and statistically significant benefits. The potential benefit of the patient is enormous.

“If you can reduce the pain and disability with which people live in the way some of our patients (test) have replied, it will transform their lives.”

Market research shows that 2 million people in the United States and 250,000-300,000 in the United Kingdom could take advantage, he added. “Millions of people around the world can benefit from this. But back pain is not just a problem of the first world; everyone has back pain.”

The drug is different from the other treatments on back pain, added Ruston, because it aims at the underlying cause of the problem rather than only its main symptom: pain.

Lumagly It is one of the most common health problems in the world. Six out of 10 people in the UK develop it at some point. It is expected that it will grow as a problem all over the world because of the aging and growth of the population. It is often difficult to diagnose the cause and even more difficult to deal successfully.

Many patients in the study have undergone a drop in the quantity of pain that suffered within one month of injections and still felt much better after a year, Persica said. However, it has reduced, but did not remove, the need to continue taking painkillers, added Ruston.

But dr. Benjamin Ellis, an Imperial Healthcare Nhs Trust rheumatologist consultant in London, specialized in chronic pain, expressed skepticism on the potential of PP353.

“Modern medicine has largely failed with people with chronometer-in other words, in the long-term-mal back. But there is few tests that the interventions that use surgery or injections or even take medicines, make a lot of difference for the vast majority of people with chronic low back pain.

“People with chronic low back pain are understandably desperate to search for everything that can help. There is also a huge industry in the supply of technologies and medicines that claim to help, but a few tests they do.

“Promess to holistic approaches, such as cognitive functional therapy, often do not take a look, in particular when the services are excessive.

“Having said that, if there is a subgroup of people with chronic low back pain that can benefit in a reliable and sure way of a simple pair of injections, then it would be fantastic news – but it seems unlikely.”