Curcumin as a Potential Therapy for Postoperative Pain: A Systematic Review

Postoperative pain is a common issue after surgical procedures and significantly compromises patient recovery and strains medical resources. Although current mainstream analgesics are effective, they cause severe adverse reactions, including addiction, respiratory depression, and gastrointestinal bleeding. Exploring safe, less toxic, and synergistic alternative or adjunctive analgesic strategies has become a key focus in optimizing postoperative pain management.

This study aimed to assess the efficacy of curcumin in postoperative pain.

Cochrane Library, Embase, PubMed, and Web of Science databases were searched for randomized clinical trials about the use of curcumin for postoperative pain from inception to April 2026. The Cochrane Risk of Bias 2 Tool was used to assess the risk of bias in RCTs.

The results revealed that some trials observed reductions in pain scores and rescue analgesic requirements among curcumin-treated participants. However, findings from the included studies showed that compared with control interventions, curcumin did not demonstrate consistent superiority across the groups. Among the RCTs that reported adverse events, no serious curcumin-related adverse events were observed. However, safety data were incompletely reported across most included trials. Hence, the current evidence cannot establish definitive conclusions regarding safety. Regarding risk of bias, only one RCT was rated high risk, and the remaining trials were rated low risk.

Curcumin may be a new option for postoperative pain relief. However, because the available evidence is limited and in the preliminary stages, current guidelines for clinical practice do not recommend curcumin. More clinical trials are needed to verify its efficacy.