Pain and inflammation

Pain can be broadly divided into three classes:

1. Nociceptive pain represents the sensation associated with the detection of potentially tissue-damaging noxious stimuli and is protective.
2. Inflammatory pain is associated with tissue damage and the infiltration of immune cells and can promote repair by causing pain hypersensitivity.
3. Pathological pain is a disease state caused by damage to the nervous system (neuropathic) or by its abnormal function (dysfunctional).

Pain is one of the leading causes for primary care consultations. While acute pain serves as a warning signal of a disease or a threat to the body and is expected to resolve itself within the normal anticipated healing period, chronic pain persists despite the fact that the initial injury – if there was one at all – has healed. Unrelieved or undertreated acute pain, however, can lead to chronic pain.

Pharmacologic management is the cornerstone of both acute and chronic pain management. Particularly for acute pain treatment, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are among the most often used analgesic agents. NSAIDs are a chemically diverse group of drugs that share more or less the same therapeutic anti-inflammatory, analgesic, antipyretic and – with the exception of the COX-2-selective agents – platelet-inhibitory properties.