Current medical research and opinion
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Review Meta Analysis
Systematic review of efficacy and safety of buprenorphine versus fentanyl or morphine in patients with chronic moderate to severe pain.
To systematically assess efficacy and safety of buprenorphine patch versus fentanyl patch in patients with chronic moderate to severe pain. ⋯ The findings indicate comparability of transdermal buprenorphine and transdermal fentanyl for pain measures with significantly fewer adverse events (nausea and treatment discontinuation due to adverse events) caused by transdermal buprenorphine.
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Previous systematic reviews and meta-analyses of treatments in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) derived their findings from either placebo-controlled studies only or separately from head-to-head and comparative studies. The purpose of this study is to compare annualized relapse rates (ARR) of fingolimod versus all of the commonly used first-line treatments in RRMS using evidence from both placebo-controlled and head-to-head studies. In absence of the head-to-head data between fingolimod and the other treatments, these comparisons were formed using meta-analysis techniques for indirect treatment comparisons. ⋯ Our study demonstrated that fingolimod significantly reduces relapse frequency in patients with RRMS compared with current first-line disease-modifying therapies.