Human Studies

Fibromyalgia (FM) syndrome is characterized by the close correlation of chronic widespread pain and other non-pain related symptoms. Aim of this study was to investigate whether telerehabilitation that provides physical and psychological support services of the mind-body techniques can affect the clinical profile and pain relief of FM patients. The study included twenty-eight female FM patients, mean aged 56.61 ± 8.56 years. All patients underwent a rehabilitation treatment (8 sessions, 1/week, 1 h/each) through Zoom platform, with the following principles of rehabilitation treatment: Anchoring to a positive emotion; listen and perceive your "own" body; conscious breathing; improve interoceptive awareness; relax. All patients then underwent clinical assessment of the physical distress and fear of movement for the Numeric Rating Scale (NRS); the Fatigue Assessment Scale (FAS); the Fear Avoidance Belief Questionnaire (FABQ); with measures of physical and mental disability for the Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire (FIQ); the 12-Items Short Form Survey; the Resilience Scale for Adults and the Coping Strategies Questionnaire-Revised. The evaluations were performed at T0 (baseline), T1 (after 8 weeks of treatment), and T2 (after 1 month of follow-up). The main finding was that telerehabilitation reduced physical and mental distress, fear, and disability ( < 0.001). Resilience and coping ability were less affected by the rehabilitative treatment. Our attempt of mind-body technique telerehabilitation has shown good results in the improvement of painful symptoms and quality of life for the FM patients but showed fewer positive impacts for the resilience and coping abilities aspects.

Music is increasingly being recognised as an adjuvant treatment for pain management. Music can help to decrease the experience of both chronic and experimental pain. Cognitive agency has been identified as a specific mechanism that may mediate the analgesic benefits of music engagement however, it is unclear if this specific mechanism translates to acute pain. Previous attempts to understand the cognitive mechanisms that underpin music analgesia have been predominantly lab-based, limiting the extent to which observed effects may apply to participants' everyday lives. Addressing these gaps, in naturalistic settings, the present study examined the degree to which cognitive agency (i.e., perceived choice in music), music features (i.e., complexity), and individual levels of musical sophistication were related to perceived pain. In an online global experiment, using a randomised between groups experimental design with two levels for choice (no choice and perceived choice) and two levels for music (high and low complexity), a sample of 286 adults experiencing acute pain reported their pain intensity and pain unpleasantness pre- and post-music listening. A bespoke piece of music was co-created with a commercial artist to enable the manipulation of music complexity while controlling for familiarity, while facilitating an authentic music listening experience. Overall, findings demonstrated that increased perceived control over music is associated with analgesic benefits, and that perceived choice is more important than music complexity. Highlighting the importance of listener engagement, people who reported higher levels of active engagement experienced greater decreases of pain intensity in the perceived choice condition, than those who reported lower levels of active engagement. These findings have implications for both research and practice, emphasising the importance of facilitating freedom of choice, and sustained engagement with music throughout music listening interventions.

The aim was to explore pain characteristics in individuals with knee OA (KOA), to compare pain sensitivity across individuals with KOA, individuals with chronic back pain (CBP) and pain-free individuals (NP) and to examine the relationship between clinical characteristics and pain sensitivity and between pain characteristics and pain sensitivity in KOA.

Medical cannabis' importance in Poland increased dramatically following its legalization as the 12th country in Europe in 2017. However, no studies have been published to give insight into Polish physicians' opinions about medical cannabis.