New Traditional Chinese Medicine Supplement Reduces Pain Faster than Conventional Pain Pills Alone: A Phase I/II Prospective, Double-Blinded Placebo-Controlled Randomized Trial.

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Copper (Supplement), published as a randomized controlled trial.

The opioid crisis demands novel solutions for postoperative pain control.

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has used herbs for the treatment of pain for thousands of years.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 93 patients were involved.

In a Phase I/II, prospective, double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trial (PRCT), 93 patients were randomized to either TCM supplement or placebo oral medication for low-risk outpatient surgical procedures.

Patients were monitored postoperatively for all forms of pain pill use (Pain Pill Scoring Sheet) and subjective pain ratings (Brief Pain Inventory Short Form).

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study.

Because people in this Copper (Supplement) study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

Blinding on both sides kept the patients and researchers unaware of who received Copper (Supplement).

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the Copper (Supplement) group a baseline to be compared against.

Conventional pain pill use was not restricted.

Primary outcomes included type and number of pain pills used and subjective pain ratings.

Secondary outcomes included an assessment of mood, general activity, sleep, and enjoyment of life.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Medicine, Chinese Traditional, Drugs, Chinese Herbal and Postoperative Pain.

Author keywords: acute pain, herbal supplement, hernia, opioids, outpatient surgery and postoperative pain control.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Copper (Supplement) in 93 patients.

Results are reported in around 5 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2023 (The American surgeon), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Copper (Supplement) compound page, all human trials.