Urgent calls to find relief for millions of Aussies suffering back pain

Published Mar 24, 2025, 2:00 AM

Many common treatments for back pain aren’t working, a new study has found, prompting urgent calls to find relief for the one in five Australians who are suffering.

Sharp pain, aches, and stiffness. There are dozens of ways to treat lubber back pain, but new researchers found just ten percent are effective.

We were specifically interested in non interventional, non surgical treatments. These are the ones that are recommended universally.

Researchers from Neuroscience Research Australia analyzed fifty six treatments, conducting trials and more than forty countries. They found for low back pain that's sudden, some anti inflammatory drugs worked. For chronic pain, exercise chiropractic treatment such as taping and spinal manipulation helped.

Chiropractic intervention can assist with most back pain. Sometimes it's an instant fixed. Sometimes the patient might require several treatments.

But medications like anesthetics, parasitamol and steroid injections didn't offer relief in either case. The evidence was inconclusive for dozens of treatments, which is why clinical experts say more trials are urgently needed to determine which work. But in some welcome news for long time sufferers, new therapies could be on the way, but.

We're listing a bit more work to make sure these therapies are

Ready to go Zowee Martin seven News