It’s hard to spend a winter without a sore throat, but luckily they usually get better in a few days.
Sore throat is a common symptom of COVID and its newer variants. And of course, many sore throats are caused by viral colds or flu, so they can be treated at home.
The most common treatment is probably throat lozenges, but do they really work better than sucking a hard candy?
Why does my throat hurt so much?
A sore throat can fall between a slight discomfort and a feeling of “swallowing razor blades.” From time to time it hurts so much to swallow that people make saliva drip from their mouths, instead of swallowing it.
Bacteria and viruses can invade the thin, moist skin (mucosa) that covers the throat. This kills many coating cells and triggers inflammation, which appears as redness, swelling, and increased secretions.
Nose infections also cause thick mucus to travel down the back of the throat and cause more irritation. This is called “post-nasal drip.” An obstructed nose makes you dependent on mouth breathing, which tends to dehydrate your already inflamed throat. Ai.
Posterior nasal drip can be one of the causes of a dry sore throat. Shutterstock
Read more: When you do RAT tests for COVID, should you also clear your throat?
What do the pills do?
The pills are a solid medicine intended to be slowly dissolved or disintegrated in the mouth. They are made up of one or more active ingredients and are flavored and sweetened to make them taste pleasant. Hard tablets are usually formed using sucrose or other similar sugars in the process for hard sweets.
There are many active ingredients added to the pills, including antiseptics; analgesics; eucalyptus and menthol oil; cough suppressants such as dextromethorphan and calming compounds. The “cough drops” and sore throat pills are almost identical, but they may contain different proportions of these ingredients.
Different brands of pills announce a confusing choice of formulations. It is now more common to see brands with “triple action” ingredients that promise to be anesthetic (to numb pain), antiseptic (to kill germs) and anti-inflammatory (to reduce redness).
Unfortunately, clinical trials are rarely conducted that directly compare the benefit of different types of drugs for the most common conditions (direct trials). This is probably due to the added complexity of these trials compared to placebo-controlled trials, and drug research often funded by the pharmaceutical manufacturer of the products. Therefore, we must rely on indirect comparisons.
The traditional approach to treating sore throat is to assume that pills or gargles with antiseptics will reduce sore throat by treating the infection that causes it.
However, a limited number of antiseptic pill trials (such as Strepsils and Betadine) produced only a small reduction in neck pain (a difference of one unit on a ten-point pain scale compared with placebo). . Therefore, they seem to provide a small degree of relief and continue to sell.
There are more and more brands that include other medications beyond antiseptics in their range of throat pills
A sore throat can make swallowing painful. Shutterstock
Read more: Health Review: Do Cough Medications Work?
Checking the effects
There are some other explanations for the apparent effectiveness of any treatment for a self-limiting infection. How do we know if the symptom or infection would have lasted longer if we had not used this treatment? To put it bluntly, we would need a control group that has not received treatment and a large sample size to overcome the role of chance that causes the difference.
Relief may come from something other than the active ingredient. After all, sucking on a sweet, hard pill could soothe a dry throat by increasing saliva release. To test this effect, we would need a true placebo drug, identical in all respects except the active ingredient.
Several well-designed and well-performed controlled clinical trials show that some active ingredients provide significantly better pain relief than placebo pills. These drugs fall into two main groups: local anesthetics (such as benzocaine) and anti-inflammatory agents (flurbiprofen).
A study comparing benzocaine pills (now offered in many brands of pills) with placebo pills found faster pain relief (20 minutes for benzocaine compared to more than 45 minutes for placebo). More study participants felt relief with the medication, although very few reported complete pain relief.
A systematic review of the research found nine studies that supported the benefit of flurbiprofen pills (available in Australia in Strepfen Intensive pills) for a number of neck pain conditions. In one of the reviewed studies, flurbiprofen produced a greater reduction in neck pain (47%) as well as difficulty swallowing (66%) and swollen throat (40%) during the first 24 hours compared to placebo.
One of the common treatments for sore throats sold in Australia is Difflam, which contains the anti-inflammatory drug benzidamine. A clinical trial found a reduction of more than two points on the ten-point pain scale on the third day in those using benzidamine versus placebo.
Some people prefer sprays for the throat. Shutterstock
Are pills better than neck pain sprays?
A study using radiolabeled drugs showed a longer and more complete delivery of oral medications for pills compared to spray and gargle. This seems to be the basis of the claim that aerosols are less effective than pills.
However, drawing conclusions from this evidence is less accurate than a study that directly compares the effectiveness of different delivery modes on actual pain. One study compared flurbiprofen and found a similar benefit for relieving pain between pills and spray.
Therefore, the choice of delivery method can be based on personal preferences, including the taste of the product.
Takeaway food
Neck pain pills and sprays provide additional relief for sore throats, especially those with local anti-inflammatory or anesthetic ingredients. They are often combined with an antiseptic agent, which may or may not provide any significant benefit.
Used as directed, these agents appear safe and have negligible adverse effects. They are also affordable and available.
But that shouldn’t stop us from using other treatments that we know also soothe sore throats, like a small spoonful of honey.
Read more: How to fix a lost voice, according to science (hint: lemon and honey do not work)