For period pain they beat both placebo and paracetamol
Across 80 randomised trials in 5,820 women with primary period pain, these drugs beat placebo at an odds ratio of 4.37 and paracetamol at 1.89. Side effects rose with them.
What the study found
Meaningful period-pain relief rises from 18% to between 45% and 53%
Across 80 randomised trials in 5,820 women with primary period pain, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDs, beat placebo at an odds ratio of 4.37 and paracetamol at 1.89. Side effects rose with them, overall at 1.29 and neurological ones at 2.74.
The caveat · Most trials poorly reported methods
The review rates most of its own evidence as low quality, chiefly because the trials reported their methods poorly, and the studies disagreed with each other substantially on the main pain comparison. Fifty-nine per cent of the trials were commercially funded and a further 31% did not say who paid. No one drug in the class could be shown safer or more effective than another, because most head-to-head comparisons rested on very few small trials.