Tag Archives: #pain

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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Study Assesses Quality of Life After Cannabis Prescribed for Chronic Pain and Other Health Symptoms

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Margaret-Ann Tait | PhD candidate
Project Manager, The QUEST Initiative
Research Manager, Faculty of Medicine and Health
Sydney Nursing School, Cancer Care Research Unit
University of Sydney

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

Response: In 2016 Australia passed legislation that allows cannabis use for medicinal purposes. Since then, an estimated 800,000 patients have received medicinal cannabis prescriptions. We wanted to know if patients with chronic health conditions in Australia are reporting their health outcomes differently after being prescribed medicinal cannabis. We used validated questionnaires to assess their health-related quality of life, levels of fatigue, pain, sleep disturbance, anxiety, and depression before starting therapy and then at regular intervals for three months after. 

We had 2327 patients participating from across Australia aged between 18 and 97 (the average age was 51), and nearly two thirds were female. Half of our participants were prescribed medicinal cannabis for more than one condition, with chronic pain conditions reported more frequently, followed by insomnia, anxiety, and mixed anxiety & depression.

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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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Gabapentin in Overdose Patients Not Necessarily the Cause of the Overdose

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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Matthew S. Ellis, PhD, MPE
Department of Psychiatry
School of Medicine
Washington University in St. Louis

Kevin Xu MD, MPH
Instructor in Psychiatry
Co-Director, PGY2 Substance Use Disorders Rotation
Department of Psychiatry
School of Medicine
Washington University in St. Louis

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

Response: Gabapentin is one of the most commonly prescribed psychotropic medications, as it is used (primarily off-label) to treat a myriad of conditions, ranging from anxiety disorders and insomnia to chronic pain, seizure disorders, and substance use disorders.
This is even more true for individuals receiving treatment for opioid use disorder, who often have multiple physical and mental co-morbid conditions.

Unfortunately, it  has increasingly been found in people who overdose, causing physicians and policymakers to consider restricting access to gabapentin and tapering/deprescribing it in stable patients taking it in the long-term.

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Venous Embolism Risk Increased With Hormonal Contraceptions, Especially with NSAIDs for Pain Relief

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Amani Meaidi, Postdoc, MD, Ph.D.
Danish Cancer Society
Danish Cancer Society Research Center
Copenhagen

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

Response: Use of birth control formulations containing estrogen (combined hormonal contraception) is an acknowledged risk factor for venous thromboembolism.

NSAID use has also been shown to increase risk of thrombosis

NSAID use is likely to be the most common co-medication to hormonal contraception use – still, no study has looked at the effect of concomitant use of hormonal contraception and NSAID on venous thromboembolic risk.

Thus, we decided to study the thrombosis safety of using hormonal contraception and NSAIDs simultaneously. 

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Nerve Pathway Identified That May Mitigate Pain from Endometriosis

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Robert N. Taylor, MD PhD
Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology
Investigator, Clinical and Translational Research Center
Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences
University at Buffalo

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

Response: Our laboratory has been interested in the hormonal modulation of endometriosis-associated pain for decades. This disease and its manifestations are multifactorial. In the current study we focused on the role of nerve growth factors and their receptors, interactive proteins that direct the growth of new nerves and allow their circuits to communicate to regions of the brain that sense pain.

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Cannabis Smoke Exposure is Not Risk Free

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Beth Cohen, MD MAS
Professor of Medicine, UCSF
Co-Director, PRIME Internal Medicine Residency Program
Staff Physician, San Francisco VA Medical Center

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

Response: Though rates of tobacco use are declining, rates of cannabis use are increasing as it becomes more widely legal and available. Though there is not as much research on the long-term health effects of cannabis, cannabis and tobacco smoke contain many of the same carcinogens and toxins and both have particulate matter than is harmful when inhaled.

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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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Study Finds TENS Device, Usually Used for Pain Relief, May be Useful in Sleep Apnea

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Joerg Steier PhD
Professor of Respiratory and Sleep Medicine
Guy’s & St. Thomas NHS Foundation Trust
King’s College London

PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study? Where is the TENS unit applied?

Response: Patients with obstructive sleep apnoea hold their breath at night, which fragments their sleep and leads to daytime symptoms like excessive daytime sleepiness. Keeping the tone of the neuromuscular structures, particularly the hypoglossal nerve and the genioglossus muscle, elevated at night using electrical current has become an established treatment over the last decade.

Hypoglossal nerve stimulation, however, is using an implantable device, is costly, and requires surgical intervention. The novelty in the current study is that using a transcutaneous electrical neurostimulator (TENS) that is placed underneath the chin in the submental area can achieve significant improvements sleep apnoea severity and associated symptoms as well.

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NEJM: Vertex Pharma Study Demonstrates Potential for First-in-Class Non-Opioid Treatment For Moderate to Severe Acute Pain

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Vertex Pharma Company Spokesperson

PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study? How does VX-548 work?

Response: VX-548 is an oral, selective NaV1.8 inhibitor that is highly selective for NaV1.8 relative to other NaV channels. NaV1.8 is a voltage-gated sodium channel that plays a critical role in pain signaling in the peripheral nervous system. NaV1.8 is a genetically validated target for the treatment of pain, and Vertex has previously demonstrated clinical proof-of-concept with a small molecule investigational treatment targeting NaV1.8 in multiple pain indications including acute pain, neuropathic pain and musculoskeletal pain.

 Vertex’s approach is to selectively inhibit NaV1.8 using small molecules with the objective of creating a new class of medicines that have the potential to provide superior relief of pain without the limitations of opioids, including their addictive potential. VX-548 is the most advanced NaV1.8 inhibitor in Vertex’s program.

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