Category Archives: Pain Research

Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy Reduced Pain of Fibromyalgia

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Mark A. Lumley, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor and Director of Clinical Psychology Training
Department of Psychology
Wayne State University
Detroit, Michigan  48202 and
Howard Schubiner, M.D
Founder and Director Mind-Body Medicine Center
Providence-Providence Park Hospitak
Warren, MI 48092 

MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?

Response: Fibromyalgia is a condition that afflicts many people with chronic pain and other symptoms, which are often severe. There is no clear evidence of tissue damage or other peripheral causes of the symptoms, and experts agree that the pain is real, and its primary source is the brain. Medications for fibromyalgia have limited effectiveness, so psychological and behavioral therapies are core to treatment.

Research documents a strong relationship between emotions and pain, and many patients with FM struggle with negative emotions related to difficult life circumstances, such as trauma, abuse, or relationship conflicts. Ironically, most psychological therapies for FM do not address these problems, but rather teach people how to manage their symptoms. Emerging research, however, demonstrates that therapies that help patients engage rather than avoid their difficult emotional experiences improve both psychological and physical symptoms, including pain. Therefore, we developed an emotion-focused therapy, which we call Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy (EAET), and compared it to both an active education-based control condition and to the leading psychological intervention for fibromyalgia, cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT).

The EAET condition was substantially better on multiple outcomes that the control condition 6 months after treatment. Importantly, although EAET did not differ from CBT on many outcomes, EAET was superior than CBT on reducing widespread and in the percentage of individuals achieving substantial pain reduction (that is, at least 50% pain reduction from baseline).

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Acupuncture and Electrotherapy Following Knee Replacement May Limit Opioid Use

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Tina Hernandez-Boussard, PhD MPH, MS Associate Professor of Medicine, Biomedical Data Science, and Surgery Stanford School of Medicine Stanford, CA 94305-5479

Dr. Hernandez-Boussard

Tina Hernandez-Boussard, PhD MPH, MS
Associate Professor of Medicine, Biomedical Data Science, and Surgery
Stanford School of Medicine
Stanford, CA 94305-5479

MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?

Response: Opioid addiction is a national crisis.  As surgery is thought to be a gateway to opioid misuse, opioid-sparing approaches for pain management following surgery are a top priority.

We conducted a meta-analysis of 39 randomized clinical trials of common non-pharmalogical interventions used for postoperative pain management.

We found that acupuncture and electrotherapy following total knee replacement reduced or delayed patients’ opioid use.

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Evidence Does Not Support Gabapentinoids in Non-Specific Chronic Low Back Pain

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Harsha Shanthanna MBBS, MD, MSc Associate Professor, Anesthesiology Chronic Pain Physician St Joseph's Healthcare,McMaster University Hamilton, Canada Diplomate in National Board, Anesthesiology (India) Fellow in Interventional Pain Practice (WIP) European Diplomate in Regional Anesthesia and Pain (ESRA)

Dr. Shanthanna

Harsha Shanthanna MBBS, MD, MSc
Associate Professor, Anesthesiology
Chronic Pain Physician
St Joseph’s Healthcare,McMaster University
Hamilton, Canada
Diplomate in National Board, Anesthesiology (India)
Fellow in Interventional Pain Practice (WIP)
European Diplomate in Regional Anesthesia and Pain

MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?

Response: Pregabalin (PG) and gabapentin (GB) are increasingly used for nonspecific Chronic Low Back Pain (CLBP) despite a lack of evidence. There have been concerns expressed over their increased prescribing for various non cancer pain indications in recent years. Their use requires slow titration to therapeutic doses and establishing maintenance on a long-term basis. With prolonged treatment, the potential gain over possible adverse effects and risks could become unclear.

We searched Cochrane, MEDLINE and EMBASE databases for randomized control trials reporting the use of gabapentinoids for chronic lower back pain treatment of 3 months or more in adult patients.

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Oral Glucosamine Found No More Effective Than Placebo For Osteoarthritis Pain

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Jos Runhaar, PhD Erasmus MC Department of General Practice Rotterdam The Netherlands

Dr. Runhaar

Jos Runhaar, PhD
Erasmus MC
Department of General Practice
Rotterdam
The Netherlands 

MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?

Response: Most international guidelines report an overall lack of efficacy of glucosamine for osteoarthrits. We however know that it is a very heterogeneous disease. Therefore, it is possible that there are certain subgroups of osteoarthritis patients that actually might have effect from glucosamine; for instance subgroups based on different pathologies underlying the clinical presentation, different co-morbidities, or different disease stages.

For investigating efficacy in subgroups large sample sizes are needed, and certain methodological techniques are necessary, to get a valid and robust answer. Several years ago, a group of renowned international osteoarthritis researchers started the OA Trial Bank especially for investigating these subgroup effects of osteoarthritis treatments and collect individual patient data of worldwide-performed intervention studies in osteoarthritis patients. When using the individual patient data of multiple studies, it brings us the large sample size and allows us to use the right methods. We do these subgroup analyses in the OA Trial Bank for many different interventions, not just for glucosamine. The subgroup analyses for glucosamine and for corticosteroid injections are published, the others are ongoing (for instance exercise, orthoses and topicals) or planned and still waiting for funding.

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Long Acting Local Anesthetic Reduced Need For Opioids After Knee Replacement

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Michael A. Mont, MD Department of Orthopaedic Surgery Cleveland Clinic Cleveland, OH

Dr. Mont

Michael A. Mont, MD
Department of Orthopaedic Surgery
Cleveland Clinic
Cleveland, OH 

MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?

Response: Postoperative pain after total knee arthroplasty (TKA) is a major hurdle for both the patients and the orthopaedists. Many analgesic modalities are currently in use, and can be used alone or in combination in order to augment their effect. Addition of local anesthetic analgesia has been shown to improve pain control and reduce opioid consumption during postoperative period. However, the effects of this analgesia tend to dissipate with time, with the longest duration of action (bupivacaine) of approximately 12 hours. Therefore, long acting local anesthetic (liposomal bupivacaine) has been developed in order to expand the duration of effectiveness of pain relief for up to 96 hours. Many studies evaluated the effectiveness of this anesthetic and demonstrated contradictory results, however, they did not use the same methods and infiltration technique. Therefore, we conducted a prospective, randomized, double-blind, controlled study at 16 hospitals using optimal infiltration techniques. Our study demonstrated significant improvement in pain, decreased opioid consumption, increased time to first opioid rescue, more opioid free patients in liposomal bupivacaine cohort. In addition, there were no unexpected safety concerns.

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Primary Care Practice Interventions Helped Maintain Adherence to Opioid Prescription Guidelines

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Jane M. Liebschutz, MD, MPH Associate Professor of Medicine Section of General Internal Medicine Boston University School of Medicine Boston, Massachusetts

Dr. Liebschutz

Jane M. Liebschutz, MD, MPH
Associate Professor of Medicine
Section of General Internal Medicine
Boston University School of Medicine
Boston, Massachusetts

MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?

Response: The number of patients receiving opioids for chronic pain has risen over the past 2 decades in the US, in parallel with an increase in opioid use disorder. The CDC and professional medical societies have created clinical guidelines to improve the safety of opioid prescribing, yet individual prescribers can find them onerous to implement.

We developed an intervention to change clinical practice to support primary care physicians who prescribe the majority of opioids for chronic pain. The intervention included 4 elements- a nurse care manager to help assess, educate and monitor patients, an electronic registry to keep track of patient data and produce physician level reports, an individualized educational session for the physician by an opioid prescribing expert based on the physician-specific practice information and online resources to help with decision-making for opioid prescribing (www.mytopcare.org). We tested whether the intervention would improve adherence to guidelines, decrease opioid doses and decrease early refills, as a marker of potential prescription opioid misuse among 985 patients of 53 primary care clinicians in four primary care practices.

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JAMA Study Finds Radiofrequency For Treating Chronic Low Back Pain

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Esther Maas, PhD Postdoctoral Research Fellow Partnership for Work, Health and Safety School of Population and Public Health University of British Columbia Vancouver, BC 

Dr. Maas

Esther Maas, PhD
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Partnership for Work, Health and Safety
School of Population and Public Health
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC 

MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?

Esther Maas, PhD Chronic low back pain causes more disability than any other condition, and has major social and economic consequences. Radiofrequency denervation is a commonly used treatment in pain clinics for a subgroup of patients with chronic low back pain resulting from anatomical structures such as facet joints, sacroiliac joint and intervertebral disc. Radiofrequency denervation uses an electric current that damages the innervating nerve of the painful structure. Despite its frequent application, until now, there was only very low quality and conflicting evidence for its effectiveness. The aim of this study was to establish whether radiofrequency denervation in addition to a standardized exercise program is more effective than the standardized exercise program alone in the selected subgroup of patients with chronic low back pain.

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Yoga As Effective As Physical Therapy For Chronic Low Back Pain

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Robert B. Saper, MD, MPH Department of Family Medicine Boston Medical Center Boston, MA

Dr. Saper

Robert B. Saper, MD, MPH
Department of Family Medicine
Boston Medical Center
Boston, MA

MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?

Response: There are a number of studies that show that yoga is effective for chronic low back pain (cLBP), but those studies included mostly white and middle-class individuals as research participants. cLBP disproportionately impacts those who are economically disadvantaged and minorities; they receive less referrals to specialists, less referrals to rehabilitation, and also less patient-education. Therefore, it was important to test whether yoga would be well- received by an underserved population, as well as be an effective form of treating chronic low back pain.

This study consisted of patients from diverse racial and economic backgrounds with multiple medical problems who were able to successfully participate and benefit from both yoga and physical therapy. This study used yoga classes that were specifically designed for people suffering from  chronic low back pain and compared the results of that treatment to those who did physical therapy.

MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings?

Response: The results show that the yoga was as effective as physical therapy for reducing pain intensity and improving people’s physical function. Patients in the study who did yoga reported that their overall pain intensity went down, that they were able to be more physically active, and a number of patients were also able to reduce or even stop all of their pain medication. The study shows that when yoga is made available and affordable to a diverse population, people of both sexes, people who are disabled, and people of different races and economic backgrounds are both receptive to yoga and, more importantly, can benefit from it.

MedicalResearch.com: What should readers take away from your report?

Response: Doctors should know that a structured yoga program for cLBP is a reasonable, effective, and safe approach for patients with chronic  chronic low back pain. Patients with cLBP should talk with their doctors about different options for treatment of back pain, starting with non-drug approaches like yoga and physical therapy. Policy makers need to examine the potential benefits for patients and cost savings for covering non-pharmacological approaches to pain.

MedicalResearch.com: What recommendations do you have for future research as a result of this study?

Response: The cost effectiveness of yoga and physical therapy for chronic low back pain still needs to be looked at carefully, as well as how the medical community can implement yoga classes for back pain widely.

While medication, imaging and invasive procedures absolutely have their place, research and clinical guidelines show that non-pharmacological procedures as first treatment options may be best.

MedicalResearch.com: Is there anything else you would like to add?

Response: Yoga is increasingly popular in the United States, and many yoga teachers are available in urban areas. However, yoga teachers and yoga classes are still relatively rare in communities of color and disadvantaged areas. Therefore, it’s important that we begin to train, build, and make yoga more available to diverse communities. Changing the common view of yoga from a fitness exercise for the healthy and wealthy, to a therapeutic approach for people with chronic pain and other conditions, is also an ongoing challenge.

Finding that yoga is non-inferior to physical therapy makes a strong case that yoga programs like the one in this study should be covered by insurance and offered by health care facilities. When a therapy like yoga is shown to be as effective as standard therapies, it should be made available to everyone regardless of ability to pay. For patients who attended more classes or physical therapy sessions, their cLBP improvement was even greater.

MedicalResearch.com: Thank you for your contribution to the MedicalResearch.com community.

Citation:

Saper RB, Lemaster C, Delitto A, Sherman KJ, Herman PM, Sadikova E, et al. Yoga, Physical Therapy, or Education for Chronic Low Back Pain: A Randomized Noninferiority Trial. Ann Intern Med. [Epub ahead of print 20 June 2017] doi: 10.7326/M16-2579

Note: Content is Not intended as medical advice. Please consult your health care provider regarding your specific medical condition and questions.

 

 

 

SIMPONI ARIA (golimumab) Improved Sleep and Pain in Ankylosing Spondylitis Trial

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Atul A. Deodhar, MD, MRCP, FACP, FACR Professor of Medicine Medical Director, Rheumatology Clinics Medical Director, Immunology Infusion Center Oregon Health & Science University 

Dr. Deodhar

Atul A. Deodhar, MD, MRCP, FACP, FACR
Professor of Medicine
Medical Director, Rheumatology Clinics
Medical Director, Immunology Infusion Center
Oregon Health & Science University 

MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?

Response: The GO-ALIVE study (CNTO148AKS3001) is a multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of golimumab, an anti-TNFα monoclonal antibody, administered intravenously (IV), in adult patients with active ankylosing spondylitis (AS). The primary objective is to evaluate the efficacy of golimumab 2 mg/kg in patients with active AS by assessing the reduction in signs and symptoms of AS. The secondary objectives include assessing efficacy related to improving physical function, range of motion, health-related quality of life, and other health outcomes.

A total of 208 patients who had a diagnosis of definite  ankylosing spondylitis (per modified New York criteria) and Bath Ankylosing Spondylitis Disease Activity Index (BASDAI) ≥4, total back pain visual analogue scale (VAS) ≥4, and CRP ≥0.3 mg/dL were randomized.  Patients were treated with IV golimumab (n=105) at Weeks 0, 4, and every 8 weeks through Week 52 or placebo (n=103) at Weeks 0, 4, and 12, with crossover to IV golimumab at Week 16 and through Week 52.

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All NSAIDS Raise Risk of Heart Attack, Even When Taken For Short Period of Time

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Michèle Bally, BPharm, MSc, PhD
Epidemiologist, Department of Pharmacy, CHUM
Researcher, Health Innovation and Evaluation Hub, CRCHUM

MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?

Response: The objective of this study was to better understand the risk of heart attack associated with using oral prescription non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs or NSAIDs (ibuprofen, diclofenac, celecoxib, and naproxen) the way people usually do to treat pain and inflammation in real life circumstances.

In clinical trials, NSAIDs were typically taken on a continuous basis in high standardized doses, as assigned by the trial protocol. However, the dosages and the treatment durations studied in trials may not represent the reality of many patients who use NSAIDs in low or varying doses, use these drugs on and off, or switch between NSAID medications.

We were particularly interested in determining the onset of the risk, that is how soon does the risk of heart attack start increasing? Also, we wanted to investigate the effect of dose and duration of treatment. To do this, we studied the use of a low or high dose level of NSAIDs over certain set periods of time, including taking these medications only for 1 to 7 days.

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