Efficacy and quality of ibuprofen and acetaminophen plus codeine analgesia

Abstract

Ibuprofen, 400 mg, was compared with 300 mg acetaminophen plus 30 mg of codeine and placebo in 120 post-orthopedic surgery patients with moderate to severe pain. The study was designed as a double-blind, single-dose, parallel-group analgesic efficacy assay. Estimates of analgesia were obtained up to 6 h using categorical and visual analog measures of pain intensity and pain relief. Estimates of selected elements of mood and of sensory and affective components of pain were obtained at 0 and 2 h using contrasting mood word/phrase pairs and a portion of the McGill Pain Questionnaire, respectively. Drugs were distinguishable from placebo in total analgesic effect, and ibuprofen was more effective than acetaminophen plus codeine, especially in terms of duration. While peak effects were comparable, they occurred 1 h later following ibuprofen. Differences among treatments were more discernible using visual analog measures. Side effects were minimal. Ibuprofen provided greater improvement in selected elements of mood than acetaminophen plus codeine at comparable levels of pain relief. While decreases in the sensory component of pain were most highly associated with pain relief provided by ibuprofen, decreases in the affective component were most highly associated with pain relief following acetaminophen plus codeine. These latter results indicate that mood assessment and the discrimination between sensory and affective components of pain could be particularly useful within analgesic drug assays, especially when comparing analgesics of differing pharmacologic class and when comparing the results of such assays in pain syndromes characterized by differing pain quality.