The significance of loxoprofen has been deduced in this study for pain and inflammation. This review has emphasized on the analgesic activity of loxoprofen and how the drug is better than NSAIDs due to its potential of lowering many complications concerned with the oral NSAID use.

Loxoprofen is a prodrug-type NSAID that is available in several formulations, including 60 mg tablets, 100 mg hydrogel patches and 50 or 100 mg tape.

In active comparator-controlled trials, oral loxoprofen therapy (ranging from 2 days to 6 weeks’ duration depending on the pain type) provided analgesic efficacy that generally did not significantly differ from that of celecoxib for postoperative pain or frozen shoulder, ibuprofen for knee osteoarthritis or naproxen for lumbar pain. In double-blind, double-dummy, multicentre trials, loxoprofen hydrogel patches were non-inferior to oral loxoprofen with regard to rates of final overall symptomatic improvement over 1–4 weeks in patients with knee osteoarthritis, myalgia or trauma-induced swelling and pain. Loxoprofen hydrogel patches were also non-inferior to other commercially available patches (ketoprofen and indomethacin) over 2 or 4 weeks in patients with knee osteoarthritis or myalgia in open-label studies.

Oral and topical loxoprofen were generally well tolerated in clinical trials.

Thus, loxoprofen is a useful analgesic option for patients with pain and inflammation, with topical loxoprofen potentially reducing the risk of gastrointestinal, cardiovascular and renal complications associated with oral NSAID use.