Evaluation of ibuprofen vs paracetamol analgesic activity using a sore throat pain model

Objective: To validate a slightly modified sore throat pain model by compar ing the analgesic efficacy of ibuprofen with that of paracetamol. Design: A double-blind, double-dummy study was conducted. Setting: Nineteen primary care centres in France. Patients: Adults consulting their general practitioner with acute sore thro at of a maximum of two days' duration. Interventions: Patients (n = 113) with acute pain associated with tonsillo- pharyngitis randomly received either 400mg ibuprofen or 1000mg paracetamol. The study design included repeated administration up to 48 hours to assess tolerability. Main Outcome Measures: At hourly intervals for 6 hours after the first dose of treatment, the patients evaluated pain intensity on swallowing, difficu lty in swallowing and global pain relief according to visual analogue scale s. Results: Ibuprofen 400mg was significantly more effective than paracetamol 1000mg in all three ratings, at all time-points for pain intensity and diff iculty in swallowing, and from two hours onwards for pain relief. There wer e no serious adverse effects and no statistically significant difference in the incidence of adverse events in the two treatment groups. Conclusions: Sore throat pain provided a sensitive model to assess the anal gesic efficacy of class I analgesics and discriminated between the analgesi c efficacy of ibuprofen and paracetamol. Sore throat is a very common compl aint and practising physicians should consider ibuprofen as an effective al ternative to paracetamol in the treatment of sore throat pain. The sore thr oat model should be considered by researchers as a sensitive assay of analg esic activity.