The first non-opoid painkiller

Off topic complaint: I am guessing an absolutely massive amount of (admittedly minor in each instance) grief has been caused by the most widely deployed simple, inexpensive, useful and familiar drug unnecessarily having two different names acetaminophen / paracetamol. Finally figured this out this year (aged 64) after previously being confused why I couldn't find any damn paracetamol in pharmacies on my occasional visits to the US.

>It's the first non opioid painkiller applicable for situations like post operative use.

Perhaps the first approved by FDA, I don't know. In many countries, metamizole is the first-line drug for postoperative pain.

(It should be noted that metamizole may very rarely cause agranulocytosis. It is suspected that the risk varies depending on the genetic makeup of the population, which would explain why it is banned in some countries but available OTC in others.)

I broke a tooth because of kidney stones...

I had kidney stones last year, by far the most painful thing I have experienced, and got opioid based painkillers which made me constipated. To try and fix that I was eating some stoned prunes and it turns out one of them wasn't stoned and I damaged a tooth (it was weak anyway and needed replacement with an implant).

Breaking news: turns out acetaminophen has an active metabolite that acts on... sodium channels.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-06-acetaminophen-discove...

I received Ketorolac after a tooth replacement (airbags packs a good punch) and it was more effective than the 5mg baby sized morphine pills they prescribe nowadays.

It's a NSAIDs but it's not to hard on the stomach but it's somewhat hard on the kidneys. However Ketorolac is a dangerous drug if you don't follow the posology (don't take 2 pills at the same time, the therapeutic index is that narrow) or if your a poor metaboliser, it leads to kindey failure, stomach bleeding and other life threatening side effects. I would be surprised if that new pain killer was superior to this.

I am sure it's less dangerous but more effective I really doubt it.

Opioid-induced constipation is easy to counteract, however, with the right form of magnesium, and/or laxatives. There are herbs that you could drink as a tea, too, for constipation.

If you ask me whether I choose pain or constipation, well, I am pretty sure you know the answer.

This constipation goes away once you stop, and everything depends on the dose and the frequency and duration of taking it.

I would certainly consider ibuprofen a "painkiller", it works wonders when I get a headache. So the phrase "the first non-opioid pain reliever suitable for treating post-surgery pain" used later in the article should actually have been the title IMHO...

There are also local anesthetics like the lidocaine family. Some of those are usable for post operative pain in the very short term, but obviously can't be administered orally. That presents a problem for most surgeries, since either they'll want to send the patient home or it's located somewhere that's hard to inject.

I'm a neuroscientist by training, and that doesn't match my understanding (although the definitions might have changed).

Inflammation would be an instance of nociceptive pain, and an NSAID would alleviate it by reducing the inflammation; and most tissue damage will result in inflammation.

Neuropathic pain, on the other hand, would be due to damage of the nerves themselves, and NSAIDs are completely useless here (ask anyone with sciatica or other nerve entrapment)

I guess that would make sense in a scientific paper or journal, but most people would have no idea what that means and just make for a confusing title that would turn people off from reading it. Almost everyone has heard of opiates in the evening news or social media.

Will that terminology explanation be a subtitle? :)

Well, pain exists for a reason for animals to pay attention to things that are harming the body.

If you remove the flag (pain), harm will continue.

Meanwhile, good old aspirin is not only an effective pain reliever but it has also been shown to reverse the effect of cartilage loss in osteoarthritis:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03785...

And that's not even taking into account its cardioprotective effects.

But hey, it can be hard on the stomach in SOME people so we developed alternatives with all sorts of nasty side effects, up to and including heart attacks and strokes (rofecoxib, valdecoxib, etc.) Hell, a decade ago, the FDA issued an advisory across the board that "Non-aspirin NSAIDS increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes":

https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-safety-and-availability/fda-d...

Some day we will look back on the attempted replacement of aspirin with these other drugs the same way we now look back on the replacement of butter with margarine (and the replacement of saturated fats with trans fats more broadly).

The FDA interfering with informed consent between doctor and patient isn't something I find a source of complex feelings.

The agency bears zero responsibility for the pain and suffering its caused by overcaution.

maybe they could lower the dosage in future studies? I'm sure they've considered that though and will take it into account.

Gabapentin is an anticonvulsants. Ibuprofen and paracetamol are anti-inflammatory. While they are effective at reducing pain, they are technically not "pain killers". The title is therefore correct.

I don't feel the title is misleading, but it may be a cultural language difference.

The term 'painkiller' is reserved for strong pain relief, and wouldn't include things like ibuprofen. That made me think immediately of a non-opioid pain blocker not just a pain reliever.

It might be clickbait, but it's also pretty big news of a fairly universal topic and not in the vein of "This one secret that your doctor doesn't want to know!"

It should have "suitable for treating post-surgery pain" added to it - that qualification is in the body of the article.

Two different meanings of the word. The article is using the traditional non-scientific meaning. Opium is a compound (as in a mixture), containing several different chemical compounds (as in molecules containing more than one element).

In the original sentence, "contains morphine" is probably modifying "compound", not “poppy plant”

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"Opium" is the dried latex (milky fluid) that comes from the seed capsules of the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum).

Opium contains ~12% morphine, ~2.5% codeine, and ~1.5% thebaine, all of which are analgesic alkaloids that act on the μ-opioid receptors. So opium itself is a cocktail of these, plus non-analgesics like noscapine (a cough suppressant) and papaverine (a vasodilator.)

Heroin is synthesized from morphine by acetylation.

Oxycodone is synthesized from thebaine in a more complex, multi-step process.

As for the terms "opiate" vs. "opioid", the terms are sometimes used interchangeably but "opiate" generally refers to naturally occurring chemical (morphine, codiene, thebaine, etc.) while "opioid" is a catch-all Heroin is often lumped in with the opiates since it is a simple synthesis; oxycodone could be called a "semi-synthetic" opioid, and fully synthetic opioids include fentanyl, methadone, and tramadol. Relative to morphine, codeine is about 1/10th the potency, heroin is 4x, fentanyl is 50-100x, and the veterinary analgesic carfentanil (given to elephants and rhinos) is 10,000x--yikes!

This sentence confused me too!