Healthcare Practitioners Seek Out Safer Alternatives to Manage Inflammation
Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, NSAIDs, are the most commonly prescribed drugs in the United States, with millions of Americans using lower-dose OTC versions as well. They are used to treat pain from any number of ailments including headache, arthritis, postoperative pain, muscle and back ache and cancer pain.
In the past few years, however, long-term and excessive use of NSAIDs has been associated with considerable negative side effects including gastrointestinal bleeding, myocardial infarction and even some cancer risk.
In this issue of Dr Jaffe's Clinical Pearls, we provide you with the results of a recent Danish study which showed an increased risk of stroke associated with short -term NSAID usage in healthy individuals. Presenting the study at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) 2010 Congress earlier this month, Dr Gunnar Gislason (Gentofte University Hospital, Hellerup, Denmark) said the results could have "massive public-health implications."
In the light of these findings, it makes more and more sense for today's informed healthcare practitioners to seek alternative pain and inflammation remedies.
PERQUE Delivers Safer Alternatives
PERQUE Pain Guard Forte and PERQUE Repair Guard have often been called "nature's NSAIDs". Packed with natural flavonoids and flavonols like quercetin dihydrate and orthoproanthocyanadins( OPCs), these 2 unique products offer some of the best antioxidant and inflammation support. They have excellent Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity (ORAC) values and gently repair at the cellular level while reducing pain and inflammation naturally. Utilizing PERQUE's novel "tabsule" dosage form, both formulations are guaranteed to dissolve rapidly and deliver full bioavailability.
Study Summary
Gislason and colleagues examined the risk of stroke and NSAID use in a population of around half a million healthy individuals living in Denmark. The researchers found that 45% of these healthy individuals had received at least one prescription for an NSAID between 1997 and 2005. They then used stroke data from further hospitalization and death registries and estimated the risk of fatal and nonfatal stroke associated with the use of NSAIDs by Cox proportional-hazard models and case-crossover analyses. The results showed that NSAID use was associated with an increased risk of stroke ranging from about 30% with ibuprofen and naproxen to 86% with diclofenac. Risk of stroke reached 90% with doses of ibuprofen over 200 mg and 100% with diclofenac doses over 100 mg showing a dose related phenomenon.
