Recent advances in the pharmacological treatment of chronic pain: a systematic review

Abstract

Chronic pain is one of the most important public health concerns, greatly impacting the patients’ quality of life and with high societal and economical costs. Despite advances in the understanding of pain mechanisms and the establishment of several strategies to decrease pain severity in patients, there continues to be a substantial proportion of patients who are refractory to the currently available treatments. Recently, novel pharmacological strategies have been developed for the treatment/ management of chronic pain, directed at symptoms and psychological complications of the illness. In this work, we performed a systematic review of the recent advances in pharmacological strategies for chronic pain. For that purpose, we searched a total of four databases (PubMed, Science Direct, Web of Science, and Scopus) for clinical trials testing drugs in patients with chronic pain, completed between the years 2017 and 2021 (1st January 2017 up to 17th November 2021). The different treatments were analysed and compared regarding their effectiveness, indications, and side effects. We included 166 studies, which provided information on 46 796 participants, mostly women (64%). This review pools together data on novel drug therapeutic strategies or improved applications of already known drugs, from opioids to monoclonal antibodies, providing researchers and health professionals with tools to ameliorate human chronic pain research and management.

Keywords

• Cancer pain; migraine. Musculoskeletal pain. Neuropathic pain. Pain management pharmacotherapy. Visceral pain.