Use of a simple pain model to evaluate analgesic activity of ibuprofen versus paracetamol

Objective: To evaluate the analgesic activity of ibuprofen against paraceta mol using a simple pain model Design: A double-blind study, Setting: Twenty general practitioners in Harare, Zimbabwe, Patients: Adults with acute sore throat of a maximum of two days' duration. interventions: One hundred and thirteen patients with acute pain associated with tonsillopharyngitis randomly received either 400mg ibuprofen or 1000m g paracetamol. The study design included repeated administration up to 48 h ours to assess tolerability, Main outcome measures: At hourly intervals for six hours after the first do se of treatment, the patients evaluated pain intensity on swallowing, diffi culty in swallowing and global pain relief according to visual analogue sca les. 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 effects 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.