Der Schmerz
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Chronic pain requires chronic treatment. Dihydrocodeine retard (DHC) complies with the requirements for treatment of chronic pain: its sustained release formula provides pain relief for up to 12 h. Thus, taking two tablets of this preparation daily is sufficient to ensure continuous pain relief. ⋯ The most frequent side effects were gastrointestinal (n=106), followed by symptoms related to the central nervous system such as dizziness, sedation, etc. (n=50), and non-specific symptoms such as indisposition (n=29). Other specific symptoms were rare and distributed over many different organ systems. Insummary, the findings of this post marketing surveillance study suggest that sustained-release dihydrocodeine is an effective and safe analgesic drug for the treatment of chronic pain of various causes.
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This manuscript reviews some aspects of the unorthodox development of analgesics. Most of them were not discovered by systematic research for analgesics; rather they were developed primarily as antipyretic or antirheumatic drugs that later became analgesics due to clinical observations. ⋯ These drawbacks limit the discovery of new analgesics. On the other hand, modern insights into the site of action and the mode of action of antipyretic analgesics are likely to further the discovery of new and better analgesics.