Category Archives: Pain-Relief

Smaller Portions of Pain Relievers After ER Visits May Be Sufficient for Pain Relief

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Raoul Daoust, MD, CSPQ, MSc
Clinical Professor and researcher
Departments of Family Medicine and Emergency Medicine
Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur de Montréal

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

Response: Usually patients are prescribed too large a quantity of opioids and unused opioids are available for misuse. The tendency in the USA is to not prescribe opioids at all, leaving some patient in agonizing pain. I wanted to provide a tailored approach to prescribing opioids so patients have enough to manage their pain but almost no unused opioids available for misuse.

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Unequal Access to Chiropractic Pain Relief Care for Back Pain in Patients with Opioid Use Disorder

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Patience Moyo, Ph.D
Assistant Professor of Health Services, Policy and Practice
Center for Gerontology and Healthcare Research
Department of Health Services, Policy, and Practice
Brown University School of Public Health

Patience Moyo, Ph.D Assistant Professor of Health Services, Policy and Practice Center for Gerontology and Healthcare Research Department of Health Services, Policy, and Practice Brown University School of Public Health

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

Response: Clinical practice guidelines recommend nonpharmacologic treatments as first-line therapies for managing chronic pain. However, little is known about the use of guideline-recommended pain therapies and whether use varies in demographic subgroups. Individuals with co-occurring chronic pain and opioid use disorder deserve particular consideration because of their increased risk of harm from opioids and other pharmacologic therapies combined with their susceptibility to social and structural barriers to accessing health care.

We sought to understand whether the well-established racial and ethnic inequities in pain management extend to individuals with opioid use disorder and to nonpharmacologic pain treatments, specifically physical therapy and chiropractic care.

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Hypertension Drug May Decrease Both Inflammation and Need for Knee Replacement

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PainRelief.com Interview with:

Iskandar Tamimi MD, PhD
Hospital Regional Universitario de Málaga
Faculty of Medicine, University of Málaga
Hospital HM
Málaga, Spain

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

Response: Knee osteoarthritis is a painful and limitting condition that affects a significant percentage of the world’s population. The treatment of end stage knee osteoarthritis is a undergoing a total knee replacement. This procedure is considered a major surgery and it’s associated with a significant number of complications, such as infections, deep vein thrombosis, residual knee pain, etc,,

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Buprenorphine Prescriptions for Opioid Use Disorder Increased During Pandemic, with Regional Variations

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Zhi-Shan Hsu
Abigail Geisinger Scholar
Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine
Scranton, PA.

Zhi-Shan Hsu MD Abigail Geisinger Scholar Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine Scranton, PA.

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

Response: The opioid buprenorphine is a mu and nociceptin receptor partial agonist and serves as an antagonist to kappa and delta receptors. These properties contribute to this medication being an evidence-based and first-line agent in Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) treatment. Brand names of buprenorphine include Suboxone, Zubsolv, Butrans, and Sublocade. In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic and continued annual increases in drug overdoses, modifications to payment, privacy, and licensing regulations that were designed to improve access to telehealth services have likely had an impact on prescribing practices of buprenorphine.

The objective of this study (1) was to expand upon existing knowledge regarding geographic disparities in the distribution and access to buprenorphine (2) as well as consider coinciding modifications to Medicaid, Medicare, and telemedicine regulations. Data was obtained from Drug Enforcement Administration’s Automated Reports and Consolidated Ordering System (ARCOS),(3) a comprehensive drug reporting system of controlled substances from their point of manufacturing to point of sale and distribution and also Medicaid and Medicare.

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Medical Music Therapy: Another Tool in Pain Relief Treatment

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Seneca Block, Ph.D(c), MT-BC  
The Lauren Rich Fine Endowed Director of Expressive Therapies
Adjunct Instructor, School of Medicine, Dept. of Psychiatry, CWRU
Director AMTA National Roster Internship
Board Certified Music Therapist
University Hospitals Connor Whole Health
Cleveland Medical Center
Cleveland Ohio 44106

PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study? What types of music do you utilize?

Response: We summarized a process improvement initiative aimed to increase a large scale medical music therapy group’s (13.3FTE) pre and post metrics collection of patient reported outcomes including stress, pain, anxiety and coping. Music Therapy sessions featured multiple interventions utilizing patient preferred music facilitated live by board certified music therapists. As a quality improvement initiative, a series of team training sessions were implemented to provide education on data capturing techniques of patient reported outcomes.

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State-Level Policies May Reduce Disparities in Pain Prevalence

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Rui Huang MA
Department of Sociology
University at Buffalo
Buffalo, NY

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

Response: In the U.S., approximately 58.5 million people (23.7% of adults) have arthritis, and at least 15 million of them suffer from severe arthritis-attributable joint pain. Severe joint pain is strongly associated with impaired functioning, disability, mortality, and limited life chances. People with less education disproportionately suffer from joint pain and reduced quality of life.

However, existing research on social determinants of pain relies primarily on individual-level data; it rarely examines the role of macro sociopolitical contexts, such as state-level policies.  Moreover, relatively little is known about the geographic distribution of pain, and even less is known about geographic variation in socioeconomic disparities in pain. 

To our knowledge, this is the first study to look at how U.S. state-level policies and characteristics shape risk of pain, and educational disparities in pain.

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Study Finds Opioids No Better Than Placebo for Back or Neck Pain Relief

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Christine Lin | Professor
The University of Sydney                                           
Sydney Musculoskeletal Heatlh
Faculty of Medicine and Health, Sydney School of Public Health
Institute for Musculoskeletal Health                             
Gadigal Country King George V Building
Royal Prince Alfred Hospital NSW Australia

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

Response: Opioids are one of the most commonly prescribed pain medicines for low back pain and neck pain, but before this trial we did not have robust, direct evidence that they are effective for acute low back pain and neck pain.

PainRelief.com: What are the main findings?

Response: We found that taking opioids did not relieve acute low back pain and neck pain in the short term, and led to worse outcomes in the long term. We randomly assigned people with acute low back pain or neck pain to take opioids or placebo (identical tablets but with no active ingredients) for up to 6 weeks, in addition to getting the best advise on how to manage their pain from their doctor. We followed these people up for 1 year.

At 6 weeks, people in the opioid group did not report lower pain levels compared to people in the placebo group. Nor were there differences in pain outcomes at 2 and 4 weeks, or in other outcomes such as physical function, recovery time, or quality of life.

Surprisingly at 1 year, people who took opioids had slightly worse pain and an increased risk of opioid misuse.

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Racial Differences in Chronic Pain Among Football Players

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Robert R Edwards, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Anaesthesia
Pain Management Center
Brigham and Women’s Hospital

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

Response: Chronic pain affects over 100 million American adults, and is a leading cause of reduced quality of life. However, in the US, the of burden of pain falls most heavily on members of racial and ethnic minority groups who frequently report more pervasive and severe pain compared with those in the majority.

In this study we evaluated race differences in pain among nearly 4,000 former professional American-style football players who self-identified as either Black or white.

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Leisure Time Exercise May Increase Pain Tolerance

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Anders Pedersen Årnes
Department of Pain
University Hospital of North Norway in Tromsø

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

exercise-pain-elderly

Response: The international association for the study of pain has actually deemed 2023 the global year for integrative pain care, which emphasizes non-drug, self-management care.

Exercise is an important way of managing chronic pain conditions, as there are few real pharmaceutical alternatives for treating them. Several studies point towards our ability to process pain signals as a possible contributing reason to chronic pain, as that often is seen to behave differently in those with chronic pain to those without. Since physical activity also appears to be a useful tool for preventing and treating chronic pain, we are trying to figure out whether this effect on pain sensitivity tolerance be one of the mechanisms through which physical activity protects against chronic pain.

This current study represents a first epidemiological look at how physical activity over time relates to pain tolerance over time in a whole population.

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COVID Effects on Nerves May Lead to Better Pain Relief Medications

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Venetia Zachariou PhD
Edward Avedisian Professor
Chair of Pharmacology, Physiology & Biophysics
Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine

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

Response: COVID-19, the disease resulting from SARS-CoV-2 infection, is associated with highly variable clinical outcomes that range from asymptomatic disease to death. For those with milder infections, COVID-19 can produce respiratory infection symptoms (cough, congestion, fever)  as well as loss of the sense of smell.

A substantial number of actively infected patients suffering from both mild and severe infections experience sensory-related symptoms, such as headache, visceral pain, Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS), nerve pain and inflammation. In most patients these symptoms subside after the infection ends, but, for other patients, they can persist. 

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