Tag Archives: @JamaNetworkOpen

Study Demonstrates Impact of Lifestyle Habits on Low Back Pain

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Christopher Williams PhD
University Centre for Rural Health
School of Health Sciences
University of Sydney, Lismore
Research and Knowledge Translation Directorate
Mid North Coast Local Health District,
Port Macquarie, New South Wales, Australia

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

Response: Other research has linked unhealthy lifestyle habits to low back pain (such as being inactive, overweight, smoking and consuming a poor diet, or too much to low back pain). However, until our study we didn’t know if changing these lifestyle habits led to improvements in a person’s back pain disability.

PainRelief.com: What are the main findings?

Response: Our clinical trial found that focusing care on lifestyle had a slightly bigger impact on back pain related disability, weight, and quality of life compared to the current recommended physiotherapy treatment for back pain (advice to stay active and exercise). The results show that helping people understand how lifestyle habits contribute to back pain and supporting them to make changes to these habits is better than the current recommended care.

PainRelief.com: What should readers take away from your report?

Response: Managing back pain is about more than the (bio)mechanics of what is going on in your spine. There are lots of things that may affect how your back feels. Lifestyle factors – activity, nutrition, weight, smoking or alcohol use, and sleep – are some of those things. Any person dealing with back pain should expect to get some help to figure out how their lifestyle habits can improve their back pain, as part of a comprehensive back pain management plan.

PainRelief.com: What recommendations do you have for future research as a result of this study?

Response: There are many ways to support lifestyle changes related to back pain. We aren’t quite sure which are the best for different people, and the best way to support people with pain make such changes. For example, while digital or virtual ways of accessing care seem promising, we aren’t sure if these are more or less effective/cost effectives as traditional ‘in-person’ models of care.

Disclosures: The study was supported by funding the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia.

Citation: Mudd E, Davidson SRE, Kamper SJ, et al. Healthy Lifestyle Care vs Guideline-Based Care for Low Back Pain: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Netw Open. 2025;8(1):e2453807. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.53807

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2828920

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Review Finds Spinal Cord Stimulation Effective for Reducing Back and Leg Pain

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Prof. Dr. Frank Huygen
Erasmus Medical Center
Rotterdam, the Netherlands

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

Response: Spinal cord stimulation (SCS) is a widely accepted therapy for people who have chronic pain that has been difficult to treat with conventional medical management (CMM) such as analgesics, physical therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy. Yet despite its clinical success, there is still debate about aspects of SCS therapy.

This systemic review and network meta-analysis aimed to improve upon prior evidence reviews by including more up to date randomized clinical trial data and using more advanced analytical methods. We evaluated the efficacy associated with SCS, including modern RCTs that compared novel forms of SCS compared to traditional SCS, or compared with CMM.

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Cleveland Clinic Study Finds Virtual Yoga Effective Way to Manage Chronic Low Back Pain, with Added Benefit of Flexibility

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Hallie Tankha, Ph.D., Research faculty
Department of Wellness and Preventive Medicine 
Cleveland Clinic, and first author of the study

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

Response: Numerous studies have highlighted the benefits of yoga for individuals with chronic low back pain, including reductions in pain intensity, improvements in daily functioning (such as walking or climbing stairs), and better sleep quality. However, these studies used in-person yoga sessions. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare delivery had to adapt quickly, and yoga was no exception. As virtual healthcare options continue to expand, this led us to wonder: could virtual yoga offer the same benefits as in-person classes for chronic low back pain?

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VA Evaluates Use of Massage Therapy for Pain Relief

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Dr. Selene Mak Ph.D, MPH
Program Manager in the Evidence Synthesis Program
VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System

Dr. Selena Mak
Dr. Selena Mak

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

Response: The Department of Veterans Affairs is committed to providing evidence-based treatments.  One way VA pursues this is through rigorous examinations of the evidence about potential therapies.  Massage therapy is one such therapy being examined. 

VA previously produced an evidence map of massage therapy for pain, which included systematic reviews published through 2018. However, new evidence is constantly appearing and to categorize the newer evidence base for use in decision-making by policymakers and practitioners, VA policymakers requested a new, updated evidence map of systematic reviews published since 2018 to answer the question “What is the certainty of evidence in systematic reviews of massage therapy for pain?”

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Empathetic Care By Physicians Provides Better Pain Relief Than Most Other Modalities

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
John C. Licciardone, DO, MS, MBA, FACPM
Regents Professor and Richards-Cohen Distinguished Chair in Clinical Research
Department of Family Medicine, MET-568
University of North Texas Health Science Center
Fort Worth, TX 76107

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

Response: The Pain Registry for Epidemiological, Clinical, and Interventional Studies and Innovation focuses on the patient-physician relationship and its association with chronic pain treatment and outcomes.

Previous studies involving physician empathy often have been limited to pain clinics and involved short-term follow-up. Our study aimed to study the impact of physician empathy on outcomes among patients with chronic low back pain in community settings throughout the United States over 12 months of follow-up.

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Prenatal Opioids Increase Risk of Multiple Adverse Health Effects

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Erin Kelty PhD
Research Fellow
NHMRC Emerging Leader
School of Population & Global Health

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


Response: Recent research from Dr Lauren Jantzie at John Hopkins found that in mice prenatal opioid exposure altered the immune system.
Our research aimed to see if the same was true in children who had been exposed to opioids in utero.

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Rutgers Study Evaluates Telehealth Delivered Mindfulness Therapy in OUD Patients with Chronic Pain

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Nina A. Cooperman, PsyD
Department of Psychiatry
Division of Addiction Psychiatry
Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School
Piscataway, New Jersey

Dr Nina Cooperman, Photo by John O’Boyle

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

Response: This study aimed to evaluate the impact of a novel intervention, Mindfulness Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE), on opioid use and chronic pain among individuals receiving methadone treatment (MT).

The main goal of this study was to conduct a clinical trial to assess online MORE, delivered remotely, through secure video or phone conferencing, with respect to a range of clinical outcomes.

This study will involve a 2-arm individually randomized controlled trial design that compares MORE and treatment as usual (TAU). 

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Opioid Prescriptions by Surgeons for Post-Op Pain Relief Decline, but Progress Has Slowed

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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

Dr. Kao-Ping Chua
Dr. Kao-Ping Chua

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

Response: Surgery is one of the most common reasons for opioid prescribing. Ensuring the appropriateness of opioid prescribing by surgeons is important, as prescriptions that exceed patient need result in leftover pills that can be a source for misuse or diversion. Although there have been numerous recent policy and clinical efforts to improve opioid prescribing by surgeons, recent national data on this prescribing are unavailable.

In this study, we analyzed a comprehensive prescription dispensing database that captures 92% of prescriptions from U.S. pharmacies. From 2016 to 2022, we found that the rate of surgical opioid prescriptions at the population level declined by 36%, while the average amount of opioids in these prescriptions declined by 46%. As a result of these two changes, the total amount of opioids dispensed to surgical patients declined by 66%.

However, there were two caveats:

First, the decline in surgical opioid prescribing was most rapid before 2020 and has slowed since then.

Second, the average surgical opioid prescription in December 2022 still contained the equivalent of about 44 pills containing 5 milligrams of hydrocodone, far higher than most patients need after surgery.

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Acupuncture and Massage May Be Part of Pain Management Plan in Patients with Advanced Cancer

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Jun J. Mao, MD, MSCE
Chief, Integrative Medicine Service
Laurance S. Rockefeller Chair in Integrative Medicine
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

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

Response: Most of the pain intervention trials focused on cancer survivors who completed treatment or patients in hospice care, little is know how these treatments work in patients living with advanced cancer. With the improvement in cancer treatment, many people are now living with advanced cancer but suffer from pain from their cancer or treatment.

Since acupuncture and massage have been found effective to manage pain in other populations, we designed this study to compare the effectiveness of these two interventions for musculoskeletal pain among patients living with advanced cancer. We hoped these results will aid patients and their doctors to make informed decision in pain treatment.

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Post C-Section Pain Relief: Noninvasive Bioelectronic Device Reduced Need for Opioids

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Jennifer Grasch, MD
Fellow, Maternal-Fetal Medicine
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology
The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center

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

Response: Cesarean delivery is the most commonly performed major surgery in the US. Almost all patients who have a cesarean delivery take opioid pain medications for postoperative pain, but we know that opioids have many short- and long-term side effects.

We conducted a triple-blind sham-controlled randomized clinical trial testing the efficacy of adding transcutaneous treatment with a high-frequency (20,000 Hz) electrical stimulation device to a multimodal analgesic protocol after cesarean delivery. 

Participants who were randomly assigned to the functional device used 47% less opioid medication postoperatively in the hospital and were prescribed fewer opioids at discharge than those who received treatment with a sham device.  

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