The effect of oral magnesium supplementation on acute non-specific low back pain: Prospective randomized clinical trial.

OBJECTIVE

We aimed to investigate the effect of oral magnesium supplementation for acute low back pain.

METHODS

This is a three-arm, prospective randomized open label clinical trial, which included two hundred and forty patients. We based our sample size calculation assumptions on a recently published clinical trial, thus we enrolled 80 patients for each group. NSAID alone group included (400 mg etodolac twice a day), NSAID + mg group included NSAID - magnesium combination treatment (400 mg etodolac twice a day with 365 mg oral magnesium supplementation) and NSAID + paracetamol group included NSAID - paracetamol combination treatment (400 mg etodolac twice a day with 500 mg paracetamol twice a day). Follow-up visits after initiation of relevant treatment were performed at 4th and 10th days and outcome measures included pain (Visual analogue scale - VAS), mobility of lumbar spine and functional outcome (RMDQ).

RESULTS

Thirty-one patients were considered lost to follow-up or excluded due to use of other medications and final analysis was performed with 209 participants in three groups (71 patients in NSAID alone group, 68 patients in NSAID + mg group and 70 patients in NSAID + paracetamol group). NSAID + mg showed a significantly higher improvement in RMDQ and VAS scores at acute stage (at 4th day visit) compared to two other study groups However, there was no significant difference between three groups in terms of mean improvement of RMDQ, VAS scores and lumbar mobility between initial visit and 10-day.

CONCLUSION

Results of this study suggest that addition of magnesium to acute low-back pain treatment does not significantly improve final clinical outcomes.

LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Level I, prospective randomized controlled study.