Background: Chronic low back pain (LBP) forms one of the heaviest burdens of disease. Vitamin C has shown analgesic effects in specific clinical conditions, reducing patient suffering and improving the quality of life. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of vitamin C as an adjuvant analgesic in treatment of chronic low back ache with radicular pain.

Methods: The present study was a prospective study of 100 patients aged 25-65 years with chronic low back ache with radicular pain, conducted in a tertiary care institute from 2019 to 2020. Patients were thoroughly interviewed and the radicular pain was graded according to the Numeric Rating Scale (NRS). 50 patients each were randomized into two groups, those that were given vitamin c supplementation (Group A) and those that weren't (Group B). The patients were then followed up fortnightly for 2 months and the radicular pain was graded at each follow-up.

Results: The mean improvement of the NRS scores in Group A was 51.36% whereas in Group B was 16.61%.In Group A, 64% of patients had good improvement, 14% moderate improvement while 14% had mild improvement, and 8% had no relief. In Group B, 40% of patients had moderate improvement, 28% had mild improvement, and 32% had no relief.

Conclusions: In this comparative study, we suggest that the supplementation of vitamin c to patients experiencing chronic LBP with radicular symptoms acts as an effective adjuvant analgesic giving relief of radicular symptoms with good improvement in the activities of daily living.

Keywords: Vitamin C, Chronic low backache, Radicular pain.

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Dr Mrugank A Narvekar

Department of Orthopaedics, Grant Government Medical College, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India