Category Archives: Back Pain

Why is Exercise Prescribed for Low Back Pain Relief?

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Matthew Jones PhD, AEP
Lecturer
Department of Exercise Physiology, Faculty of Medicine
UNSW SYDNEY

Dr. Jones


PainRelief.com:  What is the background for this review?

Response: Bck pain is the leading cause of disability worldwide and is associated with significant individual and societal costs. Low back pain can significantly impact an individual’s ability to carry out day to day tasks. Clinical guidelines consistently recommend that people with low back pain take exercise, and there does not appear to be a type of exercise (e.g., walking, Pilates, lifting weights) that is better than another for reducing pain and improving function. Despite hundreds of studies of exercise in people with low back pain, researchers do not have a good idea of how it works. This is important, because if we know how something works, we can design more effective interventions to reduce the burden of low back pain. The aim of this review was to summarise why researchers think exercise helps people with chronic low back pain (i.e., pain persisting for longer than 3 months).

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Understanding Back Pain During Neuroendovascular Procedures

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PainRelief.com Interview with:

Adnan Qureshi, MD
Zeenat Qureshi Stroke Institute
Department of Neurology
University of Missouri
Columbia, MO

Dr. Qureshi

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

Response: Optimizing of patient experience is a very important goal for any procedure. Neuro Endovascular procedures are unique because most of them are performed awake to perform repeated neurological examinations during the procedure. The angiographic tables have to be made of unique stiff material to ensure X rays can pass through and any movement during procedure can distort images. We believe understanding the factors that can be improved upon given the unique settings remains an important goal of the specialty. 

Our research broadens our understanding of complications of the procedures. Previous studies have look at the risk of stroke or bleeding but not complications like back pain which are far more common.

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5-Year Follow-Up of Open-Label Placebo Trial for Chronic Low Back Pain Relief

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Claudia Carvalho, PhD
Instituto Universitário de Ciências Psicológicas
Social e da Vida
Lisbon, Portugal

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

Response:  Some clinical trials on chronic pain have shown placebo responses that rival those of commonly prescribed first-line therapies for low back pain (LBP).  However, prescribing placebos would pose ethical problems in clinical practice.  One solution to this problem is the use of open label placebos (OLP), which are presented to patients openly as pills without active ingredients, along with a rationale indicating that because of classical conditioning of relief with active medications, the pills themselves might reduce pain. OLP has been shown effective compared to treatment-as-usual for a number of clinical conditions, including chronic LBP.  Having conducted the first clinical trial on OLP on back pain, my colleagues and I wondered whether the effects were long-lasting. To answer that question, we conducted a five-year follow-up on the patients who had received OLP for their back pain.

In our original study, patients who took OLP pills for three weeks experienced greater reduction in back pain intensity and in back pain related disability than patients that simply continued their usual treatment. Additionally, after this phase of the trial, we offered OLP to participants  in the treatment as usual group) and they also reported a significant reductions in pain and disability, together with a spontaneous decrease in the use of pain medication by participants.

In our current follow-up, we found that patients who had taken OLP for three weeks had maintained their reductions in pain and disability 5 years later. In addition, pain medication usage was reduced by 49%. This follow-up study is currently in press (https://journals.lww.com/pain/Fulltext/9000/Open_label_placebo_for_chronic_low_back_pain__a.98186.aspx)

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Electro-Acupuncture Can Provide Pain Relief from Chronic Low Back Pain

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PainRelief.com Interview with:

Jiang-Ti Kong, MD, Division of Pain Medicine
Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine
Stanford University School of Medicine
Palo Alto, CA

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

Response: Chronic low back pain is the most common chronic pain condition. Its treatment can be challenging, particularly given the side effects from conventional treatments. These include surgical complications and medication side effects, such as opioid dependence and kidney/liver damage. Acupuncture is receiving increasing attention as an alternative treatment for chronic low back pain. However, multiple large studies showed similar effect sizes between real acupuncture and sham (control) acupuncture. Interestingly, most of these studies involve the use of manual acupuncture, while pre-clinical studies suggest the use of electro-acupuncture may lead to greater analgesia than control. Few have formally studied the clinical effect of electro-acupuncture in a randomized, controlled setting. A major objective of our study was to investigate the clinical effect of electro-acupuncture relative to sham control in a randomized, participant- and assessor-blinded, clinical trial.

Acupuncture needle

Equally importantly, we were interested in exploring predictors of clinical response to electro-acupuncture, because, in general, about 40-60% of individuals treated with acupuncture experience clinically significant improvement. It would be helpful to identify responders to acupuncture before treatment initiation. We explored potential predictors of clinical response to electro-acupuncture by performing univariate, treatment heterogeneity and multivariate analysis between baseline participant characteristics and clinical outcome, defined as either pain reduction or improvement in function.

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Inadequate Pain Control After Spine Surgery is Common

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Michael M. H. Yang MD, MSc
Departments of Clinical Neurosciences, Section of Neurosurgery, 
Community Health Sciences
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
New York, New York

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

Response: Spine surgery has been ranked as one of the most painful surgical procedures. Patients who experience poor pain control have delayed recovery, take more opioids, and stay in the hospital longer. The objective of our study was to determine patient and surgical factors that increased the chance for poorly controlled pain after spine surgery. These risk factors were incorporated into a score that can be used to determine the likelihood of a poor patient pain experience.

PainRelief.com: What are the main findings?

Response: Overall, 57% of patients experienced poorly controlled pain after their spinal operation in our study. We found 7 risk factors for poor pain control: younger age, female sex, daily use of opioid medication, higher neck or back pain intensity, higher depression score, surgery involving 3 or more levels, and fusion surgery. These risk factors were used to create the Calgary Postoperative Pain After Spine Surgery (CAPPS) Score. Patients identified as low-, high-, and extreme-risk by the CAPPS score had 32%, 63%, and 85% chance of experiencing poorly controlled pain, respectively.

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ACP Recommends Non-Pharmacologic Treatments for Pain Relief From Acute Non–Low Back, Musculoskeletal Injuries

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Timothy Wilt, MD, MPH
Chair ACP Clinical Guidelines Committee
Professor of Medicine
Minneapolis VA Center for Care Delivery and Outcomes Research.

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

Response: Acute non-low back musculoskeletal pain is common, disabling and costly. Most are treated in outpatient settings. Numerous pharmacologic and nonpharmacologic treatment options exist but there is uncertainty of their benefits, harms and costs. Additionally, opioid prescriptions are common for acute musculoskeletal injuries but have harms and can lead to chronic opioid use including dependence and overdose. ACP and AAFP developed these evidence based guidelines to assist clinicians in providing the highest quality care to their patients by considering information on benefits, harms and costs alongside patient values and preferences. Our main recommendations are as follows:

1)      ACP and AAFP recommend that clinicians treat patients with acute pain from non–low back, musculoskeletal injuries with topical nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) with or without menthol gel as first-line therapy to reduce or relieve symptoms, including pain; improve physical function; and improve the patient’s treatment satisfaction.

2)      ACP and AAFP suggest that clinicians treat patients with acute pain from non–low back, musculoskeletal injuries with oral NSAIDs to reduce or relieve symptoms, including pain, and to improve physical function, or with oral acetaminophen to reduce pain.

3)      ACP and AAFP suggest that clinicians treat patients with acute pain from non–low back, musculoskeletal injuries with specific acupressure to reduce pain and improve physical function, or with transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation to reduce pain.

4)      ACP and AAFP suggest against clinicians treating patients with acute pain from non–low back, musculoskeletal injuries with opioids, including tramadol.

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Is Spinal Manipulation Better Than Placebo for Low Back Pain Relief?

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
James S Thomas, PT, PhD
Professor
Departments of Physical Therapy and Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
Director of Motor Control Laboratory
Virginia Commonwealth University
Departments of Physical Therapy and Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
Director of Motor Control Laboratory
Virginia Commonwealth University
Richmond, VA 23298

Dr-James-Thomas
Dr. Thomas

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

Response: While there are numerous studies on spinal manipulation which is typically defined as  high velocity short amplitude thrust procedure to treat a hypomobile vertebral segment, there are very few studies that examine spinal mobilization (typically described as non-thrust or as a muscle energy technique). There are even fewer studies on the comparative effectiveness of these interventions. 

Accordingly, the RELIEF study was designed to provide a rigorous examination of the comparative effectiveness of the two most common manual therapy techniques for treating low back pain (i.e., manipulation versus mobilization) compared to an effective placebo (i.e., Sham Cold Laser).

PainRelief.com: What are the main findings?

Response: Relative to the placebo group, there was no difference in the change in pain or disability for either spinal manipulation or mobilization. 

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PET Probe Pinpoints Sites of Pain Generation to Improve Pain Management

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Sandip Biswal MD
Associate Professor of Radiology
Co-Section Chief, Musculoskeletal Imaging
Director, Musculoskeletal Imaging Fellowship
Member, Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford (MIPS) and Bio-X
Department of Radiology
Stanford University School of Medicine

PainRelief.com:  What is the background for this study?
Response: Our ability to manage patients with chronic pain remains woefully inadequate. Chronic pain patients are faced with limited resources and inadequate care, and as a result, they make up the #1 disease group in the world—numbering more than heart disease, diabetes and cancer combined. Those suffering from low back pain, headache, fibromyalgia, arthritis and many other pain syndromes make up this ever-growing population. A big part of our inability to care for chronic pain patients is due to the fact that our current imaging methods for correctly identifying pain generators remain substantially inaccurate. Our ability to accurately identify the cause of a person’s pain, discomfort, inflammation or other related musculoskeletal symptom(s) using current clinical imaging approaches, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computed tomography (CT), digital radiography (x-ray) and ultrasound, is quite limited, lacks sensitivity/specificity and can even misguide treatment. As a musculoskeletal radiologist, I witness these shortcomings on a daily basis. I, for example, see firsthand how the lack of reliable diagnostic tools leads to significant misdiagnosis, mismanagement, incorrect use of opioids, unhelpful surgeries and, ultimately, therapeutic failures. We need a much better way to diagnose pain generators. 

Accordingly, our group has been developing new clinical imaging methods that pinpoint the site of pain generation using imaging probes—more specifically, positron-emission tomography (PET) tracers that specifically target “pain receptors” or “pain molecules.” These pain receptors or pain molecules are present in abundance at the site of pain generation. After injecting one of these imaging probes into a patient through the vein, we give the probe a few minutes to circulate around the body and stick to areas that have a high density of pain receptors. We can then take a picture of the patient with a special camera that will show “hot spots” on the image that signify the location of high number of pain receptors, thereby highlighting “painful” pro-inflammatory and/or pro-nociceptive tissues. With this approach, doctors and patients have information with which they can make more objective decisions about the diagnosis and treatment of one’s pain.

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Tanezumab for Chronic Low Back Pain Relief: Phase 3 study

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“Tanezumab is a monoclonal antibody that is part of an investigational class of non-opioid chronic pain medications known as nerve growth factor (NGF) inhibitors.” Link

“Tanezumab 2.5 mg administered subcutaneously (SC), which is being evaluated for patients with chronic pain due to moderate-to-severe osteoarthritis (OA) who have experienced inadequate pain relief with other analgesics.” Link

Comments from Pfizer regarding the study of Tanezumab for chronic low back pain, July 21 2020.

“Pfizer and Lilly made the decision to prioritize tanezumab as a potential treatment for osteoarthritis, based on an assessment of the totality of SC tanezumab data and an initial discussion with the FDA.

At this time, regulatory submissions are not planned for tanezumab in patients with moderate-to-severe chronic low back pain (CLBP), but we recognize the significant patient needs and intend to maintain an open dialogue with regulatory authorities on potential future regulatory pathways for tanezumab. Additional data analyses, and potentially further clinical study, may be required to more fully characterize tanezumab in CLBP patients.“

Additional information:

Alliance announced in early March that the U.S. FDA accepted the regulatory submission for Tanezumab, a potential first-in-class treatment for patients with chronic pain due to moderate-to-severe osteoarthritis.

Citation:

Markman, John D.a,*; Bolash, Robert B.b; McAlindon, Timothy E.c; Kivitz, Alan J.d; Pombo-Suarez, Manuele; Ohtori, Seijif; Roemer, Frank W.g,h; Li, David J.i; Viktrup, Larsj; Bramson, Candacek; West, Christine R.k; Verburg, Kenneth M.k Tanezumab for chronic low back pain, PAIN: June 25, 2020 – Volume Articles in Press – Issue – doi: 10.1097/j.pain.0000000000001928

Back Pain: Web-Based Self-help Intervention to Prevent Depression

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PainRelief.com Interview with:

Lasse B. Sander, PhD
Institute of Psychology
Department of Rehabilitation Psychology and Psychotherapy
Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg
Freiburg, Germany

Lasse B. Sander, PhD Institute of Psychology Department of Rehabilitation Psychology and Psychotherapy Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg Freiburg, Germany
Dr. Sander

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

Response: People with chronic pain have a significantly increased risk of developing depression. When depression and pain collide, this is a considerable burden for those affected. In addition, pain management is made more difficult due to comorbidity.

We have known for some years now that the onset of depression can be delayed or even completely prevented by means of early psychological therapies. However, until now there has been no scalable application option available for routine healthcare.

In our study we were able to show that this can be achieved by a digital self-help intervention.

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