Browse by Audience
Knee osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common form of OA and a leading cause of disability worldwide. Chronic pain and functional loss secondary to knee OA put patients at risk of developing depression, which can also impair their treatment response. However, no tools exist to assist clinicians in identifying patients at risk. Machine learning (ML) predictive models may offer a solution. We investigated whether ML models could predict the development of depression in patients with knee OA and examined which features are the most predictive.
Learn More >The current study compared the effectiveness of remote electrical neuromodulation (REN) to that of standard-care medications for acute treatments of migraine, using a within-subjects design. within-subject analysis was performed on data from 78 adult chronic migraine patients who participated in a clinical trial with REN, on four end points: single-treatment pain relief, single-treatment pain freedom, consistency of pain relief and consistency of pain freedom. No statistical differences were found between REN and the tested medications, in any of the effectiveness outcomes: single-treatment pain relief p = 0.056, single-treatment pain freedom p = 0.532, consistency of pain relief p = 0.369, consistency of pain freedom p = 1.00. The results suggest that REN may provide an effective non-pharmacological alternative for standard care abortive medications in individuals impacted by chronic migraine.
Learn More >The goal of the present study was to explore additional evidence of convergent and discriminant validity of the Central Sensitization Inventory (CSI) in a large sample of subjects with fibromyalgia (FM).
Learn More >To evaluate the one-year effectiveness and tolerability of galcanezumab in real life and the prognostic indicators of persistent response.
Learn More >Placebo effects substantially contribute to analgesic treatment outcomes and might be leveraged to enhance gold-standard treatments. The taste of oral medications has been proposed to boost placebo effects. Here, we aimed at estimating in how far the taste of an oral medication enhances placebo analgesia. We conducted a randomized, double-blind, between-group, single-visit study, with pre-treatment baseline. Over the course of three sub-studies, 318 healthy volunteers (297 included) were tested in a clinical-trial setting. Participants were subjected to experimental tonic cold water pain (cold pressor test) before and after receiving taste-neutral (water), or bitter (quinine), or sweet (saccharine), or no placebo drops. Pre- vs post-treatment changes in area under the pain rating curve, the main outcome, indicated that placebo treatment showed a small analgesic effect vs no treatment. Added taste induced placebo enhancement in the very small effect size range, but accounted for a substantial portion of the overall placebo effect. No noteworthy advantage of sweet over bitter placebo was observed. An exploration of heart rate recordings indicated that placebo treatments were associated with an increase in peak heart rate response to cold water, but these were not associated with placebo analgesia at an individual level. Placebo treatments were associated with minimal side effects. These results indicate that added taste may be an easy-to-implement, cost-effective, and safe way to optimize treatment outcomes and that taste-neutral preparations may reduce placebo-related outcome variance in clinical trials. Further studies are needed to test if these findings can be translated into clinical scenarios.
Learn More >To compare the influence of age on inflammatory (bone marrow oedema. BME) and structural (fat lesions (FL), erosions and ankylosis) MRI lesions in the SIJ of patients with and without axial spondyloarthritis (axSpA).
Learn More >We evaluated the association between chronic severe back pain with disability and participation, in U.S. Adults using data from the US 2019 National Health Interview Survey. In our sample of 2,925 adults (weighted n: 20,468,134) who reported having chronic severe back pain, 60% reported mobility disability, 60% had work limitations, 34% were limited for social participation and 16% had self-care limitations. Older age (65+) was associated with mobility difficulties (OR 1.99, 95% CI 1.28,6.09) and work limitation (OR 2.21, 95% CI 1.61,3.05). Lower socioeconomic status was associated with increasing odds of disability across the four categories. Being obese was only associated with mobility difficulties (OR 1.95, 95% CI 1.41,2.71), while not working in the past week was associated with difficulties in mobility (OR 3.55, 95% CI 2.64,4.75), self-care (OR 3.34, 95% CI 2.20,5.08), and social participation (OR 3.20, 95% CI 2.13,4.80). Comorbidities were highly associated with limitations in all four categories. Those deeming their ability to manage their pain ineffective were twice as likely to have limitations in self-care, social and work participation but not mobility. Identifying factors associated with disability and limitation may help target appropriate management for persons with chronic pain at high risk for disability.
Learn More >We evaluated the metabolomic profile in CSF, serum and urine of participants with idiopathic intracranial hypertension (IIH) compared to controls and measured changes in metabolism associated with clinical markers of disease activity and treatment.
Learn More >Pain is a multidimensional factor and core domain of psoriatic arthritis (PsA). This analysis aimed to quantify the role of potential inflammation-associated outcomes on pain reduction in patients with PsA receiving tofacitinib, using mediation modeling.
Learn More >An extensive body of research has highlighted the impact that parent/caregiver factors have on functioning and treatment outcomes among youth with chronic pain. However, parent/caregiver expectations in pain treatment have been largely understudied, despite strong evidence that treatment expectations are associated with treatment engagement and overall outcomes in non-pain populations. Accordingly, the primary aim of this investigation was to preliminarily examine the manifestation and measurement of parent/caregiver treatment expectations in an intensive interdisciplinary pediatric pain treatment (IIPT) setting.
Learn More >