Reacción a "A review questions the efficacy of the painkiller tramadol for chronic pain"

This review presents an analysis of data from a high-level scientific publication, and therefore acknowledges that almost all of the studies included have a high risk of bias and that the results obtained were very heterogeneous.

It is known that tramadol has moderate analgesic potency and that, like other opioid analgesics, it increases the likelihood of experiencing serious events (addiction, tolerance, aberrant behaviour, etc.) compared to placebo.

However, what reduces the reliability of the results is the fact that the trials included in the analysis had a maximum follow-up of 12 weeks, with a duration of between 2 and 16 weeks, which limits the ability to establish causality between tramadol use and the development of cancer. This is too short a period for drug-induced neoplasms to develop. The neoplasms could have been pre-existing, coincidental, or influenced by other factors not controlled for in the studies.

Based on the data available to date, no published study can conclude that tramadol causes cancer. The results of this study were considered to be at high risk of bias, so the conclusions should be adjusted accordingly.