Category Archives: Pain-Relief

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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Patient Preferred Music Therapy Reduced Pain in Real World Settings

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Seneca Block, Ph.D(c), MT-BC  
Board Certified Music Therapist and
The Lauren Rich Fine Endowed Director for Expressive Therapies
University Hospitals Connor Whole Health

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

Response: University Hospitals Connor Whole Health has developed an extensive network of inpatient music therapy programs through out 8 major community medical centers across North Eastern Ohio. Music therapy is an evidence-based practice that was used through out these locations to provide front-line non pharmacological treatment of pain, stress and anxiety.

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JAMA Study Finds Clinicians Not Maximizing Opportunities to Initiate Buprenorphine Treatment For Patients With Opioid Addiction

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Kao-Ping Chua, MD, PhD
Susan B. Meister Child Health Evaluation and Research Center
Department of Pediatrics, University of Michigan Medical School
Ann Arbor MI 48109

Kao-Ping Chua

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

Response: Opioid overdose deaths are at a record high in the U.S. Many opioid overdose deaths can be prevented by medications for opioid use disorder, such as buprenorphine, a drug that can prescribed in office settings. However, buprenorphine cannot prevent opioid overdose deaths if patients are never started on the medication or only stay on the medication for a short time. For that reason, rates of buprenorphine initiation and retention are critical metrics for measuring how well the U.S. health care system is responding to the opioid epidemic.

At the time we started our study, several other research groups had evaluated U.S. rates of buprenorphine initiation and retention using data through 2020. However, more recent national data were lacking. We felt that this was an important knowledge gap given the many changes in society that have occurred since 2020. For example, it was possible that the relaxation of social distancing measures during 2021 and 2022 might have reduced barriers to health care visits, thereby increasing opportunities to initiate treatment for opioid addiction with buprenorphine.

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EVALI – Vaping and Lung Injury – Storylines on Popular Medical Dramas May Change Behavior

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Beth Hoffman, PhD, MPH (she/her)
Postdoctoral Associate
Center for Social Dynamics and Community Health
Department of Behavioral and Community Health Sciences
University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health

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

Response: Previous studies suggested that hearing about EVALI in the news might stop people from vaping or get them to quit, but there had yet to be research examining if storylines on fictional medical television shows could have the same effects. There had also been few studies to date leveraging Twitter data, which allowed us to see how viewers were reacting to the storylines in real-time, in their organic viewing environment.

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Study Finds Uncertain Effectiveness of Common Medications for Low Back Pain Relief

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PainRelief.com Interview with:

Dr. Wewege

Dr Michael Wewege, PhD
Research Fellow – Neuroscience Research Australia

Prof. McAuley

Prof James McAuley, PhD
Director – Centre for Pain IMPACT, Neuroscience Research Australia,
Professor – School of Health Sciences,
University of New South Wales
Sydney, Australia




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

Response: We conducted this study because medicines are the most common treatment for adults with acute non-specific low back pain. One of the most important questions is “What is the best medicine to use?” We wanted to compare the medicines with each other because this is the information patients and physicians want to know, but previous research has focused on only comparing medicines to placebo. Physicians are deciding between these medicines based on their clinical expertise; we hoped to support their decision making with a rigorous piece of research.

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Study Evaluates Equine-Facilitated Therapy For Back Pain Relief

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Sanna Mattila-Rautiainen
Biomedicine, Sports and Exercise Medicine
University of Eastern Finland

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

Response: The background of our study is to evaluate the effect of 12 weeks Equine Facilitated Physical therapy intervention for Chronic Low Back Pain patients´ functional impairments that were self-assessed, to their wellbeing and amount of pain.

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Knee OsteoArthritis: Study Finds Radiofrequency Nerve Ablation Provides Pain Relief

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Kaitlin Carrato, M.D., Chief Resident in Interventional Radiology
MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, and
John B. Smirniotopoulos, M.D., Interventional Radiologist
MedStar Georgetown University Hospital

PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study? What is the main indication for the RFA procedure?

Response: Roughly one in four U.S. adults have knee pain due to arthritis that interferes with their everyday lives and activities. A treatment called genicular nerve radiofrequency ablation (RFA) is a safe and effective option for reducing pain from osteoarthritis of the knee, one of the most common joints affected by osteoarthritis. Interventional radiologists perform genicular nerve RFA using image guidance to place probe needles next to nerves around the knee that send pain signals to the brain. The primary indication for this procedure is chronic pain that has not been sufficiently managed by other treatments, prescription medications, physical therapy, or for patients with persistent pain even after knee replacement.

This study examined patient demographics, prior surgical history, degree of osteoarthritis and other clinical characteristics that may affect how well RFA reduces knee pain. We measured post-procedure pain in 36 patients using the visual analog scale (VAS) and the Western Ontario McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis (WOMAC) pain scale. We then evaluated whether pain reduction levels were influenced by demographics and clinical characteristics.

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Chronic Multifocal Pain Linked to Accelerated Cognitive Decline

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Yiheng Tu
CAS Key Laboratory of Mental Health
Institute of Psychology
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Department of Psychology
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences
Beijing, China

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

Response: Chronic pain (CP) is a leading source of disability worldwide. Multisite chronic pain, where pain is experienced in multiple anatomical locations, affects almost half of chronic pain patients and has been found to have a greater burden on patients’ overall health. However, However, it has not been clear whether people with multisite chronic pain suffered from aggravated neurocognitive abnormalities.

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