The best drug to help children with broken bones, bruises or sprains manage their pain appears to be ibuprofen, a new Canadian study has concluded.
The first head-to-head study of ibuprofen, acetaminophen and codeine found that ibuprofen works best for children with trauma injuries.
Doctors at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa tested the effectiveness of the painkillers among 300 children, aged 6 to 17, who entered their emergency room with injuries.
The children were randomly assigned standard doses of one of the three medicines. Doctors then periodically asked the children to rate their pain on a 100-point scale.
Half an hour later, ratings were similar in the three groups.
But an hour after taking the medicine, the children who took ibuprofen reported substantially greater pain relief than the other two groups. The pain scores for children who had taken ibuprofen had dropped 24 points 60 minutes after taking the pain reliever, compared with 12 points for the acetaminophen group and 11 points for the codeine group.
The differences remained two hours later.
Also at 60 minutes, about half the ibuprofen children reported what doctors considered "adequate" pain relief, or scores below 30, compared with 40 per cent of the codeine children and 36 per cent of the acetaminophen group.
There were no major side effects from any of the drugs.
Ibuprofen, which is available under the brand names Advil and Motrin as well as generically, may work better for pain from trauma because it targets inflammation while acetaminophen and codeine do not.
Results appear in the March edition of Pediatrics, being released Monday.
Doctors advise against giving aspirin to children because of the risk of Reye's syndrome, a syndrome that affects the central nervous system and the liver, and can be fatal.
