NEW YORK — A single intramuscular injection of methylprednisolone failed to relieve idiopathic, nontraumatic, low back pain any better than a placebo in a small, double-blind, randomized trial.
Corticosteroids previously had not been tested in a randomized, controlled trial for acute low back pain in young adult patients in the emergency department, Benjamin W. Friedman, M.D., said at the annual meeting of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine.
In the trial, the pain level of 44 patients who received 160 mg of the methylprednisolone acetate did not improve significantly more than the pain level of 43 patients who received a saline injection.
On a 1–10 scale—with mild pain rated 1 and excruciating pain, rated 10—pain scores shifted from 7.6 at baseline in the corticosteroid group to 3.5 at 1 week and 2.9 at 1 month.
In the placebo group, scores improved from 8.1 at baseline to 3.3 at 1 week and 2.3 at 1 month, reported Dr. Friedman of the Montefiore Medical Center, New York.
After 1 month, similar percentages of patients in the corticosteroid and placebo groups reported having had low back pain in the previous 24 hours
All of the patients were 50 years of age or younger (with an average age of 36 years) and reported low back pain for 1 week or less.