Tag Archives: #pain

Chronic Pain Linked to Later Life Pessimism and Joblessness

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Alex Bryson PhD
Professor of Quantitative Social Science
UCL Social Research Institute
University College London  London

Prof. Bryson

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

Response: The authors were concerned to know more about both the incidence of chronic pain and its implications for health, wellbeing and labour market prospects later in life.  So we turned to a birth cohort study (The National Child Development Study) tracking all those born in Britain in a single week in 1958 through to age 62 to take a life-course approach.

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Yoga for Knee Arthritis: Some Improvement in Function but No Pain Reduction

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Professor Kim Bennell FAHM
Barry Distinguished Professor | NHMRC Leadership Fellow
Dame Kate Campbell Fellow
Centre for Health Exercise and Sports Medicine
Department of Physiotherapy
Melbourne School of Health Sciences
The University of Melbourne, Victoria Australia

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

Response: Osteoarthritis is very common, and a major contributor to disability and decreased function. Exercise is a key treatment for osteoarthritis, but many people admit to not undertaking exercise. We investigated whether a free, online 12-week unsupervised yoga program (“My Joint Yoga”) could improve pain and function in people with knee osteoarthritis. Our team worked with yoga therapists, physiotherapists and people with lived experience of osteoarthritis to design an online yoga program tailored specifically to those with knee osteoarthritis.

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Pain Stimulates Protective Mucus Secretion in GI Tract

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Isaac M. Chiu PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Immunology
Harvard Medical School
Boston, MA 02115

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

Response: The gut is densely innervated by pain fibers and we know that pain is associated with gut-related diseases. However, it is not so clear how pain fibers talk to the gut lining and barrier. We were interested to see that pain fibers were very close by the epithelial cells that line the gut, and in particular the goblet cells that produce mucus. We were wondering if mucus could be regulated by pain. Mucus is a key protective barrier that keeps our gut healthy by keeping harmful substances as well as bacteria away from the gut wall.

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Home Sensors Developed for Overnight Monitoring in Opioid Use Disorder

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Marian Wilson, PhD, MPH, RN, PMGT-BC 
Associate Professor
Assistant Editor, Pain Management Nursing
Washington State University College of Nursing

Dr. Wilson

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

Response: People with opioid use disorder often experience withdrawal symptoms that can interfere with recovery success. Our team was interested in whether noninvasive home sensors could provide accurate information to detect overnight restlessness and sleep problems that could indicate opioid withdrawal for adults prescribed methadone for opioid use disorder.

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Brain and Joints May Share Similar Inflammatory Mediators in Rheumatoid Arthritis

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Dr. Woojin Won
KU-KIST Graduate School of Converging Science and Technology
Korea University, Seoul
Center for Cognition and Sociality, Institute for Basic Science (IBS), Daejeon
Republic of Korea

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

Response: Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic systemic autoimmune disease that mainly affects the joint, and 30-70% of patients have complained of psychiatric disorders such as depression and cognitive impairment. It was suggested that inflammation of the brain was the cause, but the detailed mechanism was unknown. Based on the previous studies, I hypothesized that neuroinflammation will affect astrocytes (star-shaped brain cells) and induce psychiatric disorders.

In addition, there have been clinical reports that inhibition of monoamine oxidases (MAOs), enzymes that catalyze the oxidation of monoamine, relieves pain and mood disorder symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis. However, it is difficult to find a study on MAO inhibitors and rheumatoid arthritis. The reason may be that although MAO consists of two types (MAO-A and MAO-B), several studies have used them without distinction.

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Novel Protocol Reduced Use of Opioid Pain Relievers After Knee and Shoulder Surgeries

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Nicole Simunovic, MSc
On behalf of the NO PAin Principal Investigators

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

Response: Orthopaedic surgeons prescribe more opioids than any other type of surgeon in North America. Opioids have the potential to be highly addictive and can cause serious harm or even death if taken in excess. The goal of our clinical study was to determine if an opioid sparing approach to postoperative pain management was safe and effective in patients undergoing arthroscopic knee and shoulder surgery.

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iovera° Cryoneurolysis Treatment is Drug-Free Option for Knee Pain

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Vinod Dasa MD
Professor of Clinical Orthopaedics
Director of Research
Louisiana State University Health

PainRelief.com:  Would you describe cryoneurolysis?

Response: Cryoneurolysis is a specialized intense cold therapy technique that provides long-term pain relief without the use of any system drugs. The iovera° system has revolutionized the delivery of long term, drug-free pain relief by delivering a concentrated, targeted cold therapy through a handheld device. The iovera° treatment blocks targeted sensory nerves from sending pain signals. Small closed-end needles are inserted into the treatment region and a treatment cycle is performed until the nerve is blocked, providing pain relief until the nerve regenerates. The localized nerve blocks and targets peripheral nerves to temporarily stop pain signals for up to 90 days and provide immediate, long-lasting pain relief without the need for opioids. The iovera° treatment is used to treat specific nerves so the pain relief is focused only on the part of the body that is being treated.

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Use of Medical Cannabis Can Expose Patients to Harmful Contaminants

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Maxwell C. K. Leung, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Systems Biology and Toxicology
New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences
Arizona State University, West Campus

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

Response: Over 200 million Americans currently have legal access to medical cannabis, recreational cannabis, or both. Yet, cannabis remains an illicit Schedule 1 substance at the federal level. This limits the efforts of several federal agencies to regulate harmful contaminants – including pesticides, heavy metals, solvents, microbes, and fungal toxins – in cannabis.

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University of Pittsburgh Study Finds Durable Pain Relief in Obese Patients Following Bariatric Surgery

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Wendy C. King, PhD
Epidemiology Data Center
School of Public Health
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA

Dr. King

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

Response: Previous studies had provided evidence that bariatric surgical procedures are associated with improvements in pain, physical function and work productivity. However, most prior studies only followed participants 1-2 years, at which point participants were at the peak of their weight loss. 

Among a large cohort of US adults, we wanted to evaluate how much initial improvements in pain, physical function and work productivity declined during long-term follow-up, when some degree of weight regain is not uncommon. We limited our study to adults who underwent Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB) or sleeve gastrectomy (SG), the two most common bariatric surgical procedures done today.

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Cannabis During Pregnancy May Have Long Term Mental Health Consequences for Children

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David-Baranger
Dr. Baranger

PainRelief.com Interview with:

David A. A. Baranger, PhD
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences

Dr. Brogdan

Ryan Bogdan, PhD
Associate Professor of Psychological & Brain Sciences
Department of Psychiatry
Washington University in St Louis
St Louis, Missouri



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

David Baranger: Prenatal cannabis use is increasing in the United States. Prior work from our group found that prenatal cannabis exposure, particularly when it occurred after mothers learned they were pregnant, was associated with worse mental health outcomes in children aged 9-10.

In this study we followed up with this same group of children, who are now as old as 12, to ask whether anything has changed. Have they improved, or gotten worse? To our surprise, we found that children with prenatal cannabis exposure still had worse mental health outcomes – things had not gotten better, nor had they gotten worse.  

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