For knee and hip arthritis, the gain was 3.7 points where 9 counts
Paracetamol beat placebo by 3.7 points on a 0-to-100 pain scale. The same research group treats 9 points as the smallest change a patient would notice.
What the study found
For knee and hip arthritis the effect is real and too small to feel
Paracetamol beat placebo by 3.7 points on a 0-to-100 pain scale, on high-quality evidence. The same research group treats nine points as the smallest change that matters to a patient. A bigger network of 192 trials found five oral drugs clearing a comparable bar; paracetamol was not one.
The caveat · Other groups draw the line elsewhere
The nine-point line comes from a companion review by the same authors, not from this analysis, and other groups draw it elsewhere. The 192-trial network excluded any trial with fewer than 100 people per group and anything published outside English. Averages hide people, and some individuals in these trials did improve. Patients on paracetamol were also nearly four times as likely to show an abnormal liver function test, a laboratory result the authors say they cannot interpret clinically.