New research presented at the 2019 ACR/ARP Annual Meeting suggests that opioids contribute no measurable benefit to quality of life or depression for patients with osteoarthritis (OA).
Researchers also found only small benefits on pain and function after two to 12 weeks of treatment, and interestingly, strong opioids had consistently worse pain relief benefits and a greater risk of any safety-related outcome than weak opioids in this meta-analysis.