Tag Archives: pain relief

Pain Relief Study of Low Carb Ketogenic Diet

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Rowena Field
B.App.Sc (phty) M.Physio. APAM
Physiotherapist/Director
PhD research candidate Sydney University
STEPP (solutions tools and education for persistent pain)

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

Response: Chronic pain is a difficult problem to treat because it is multifactorial, driven by the brain continuing to arrive at the conclusion that protection is required. Turning up the sensitivity in the nervous system results in ongoing pain as a protector even though there is no new tissue damage. Other protection mechanisms such as increased inflammation, and increased sympathetic ‘fight or flight’ also occur.

Chronic pain becomes part of a whole system protective response, so looking at other treatment options that alter the system (such as diet) are useful additions to pain management. A ketogenic diet restricts carbohydrate to below 50g/day producing ketones for energy from fat. It has been used to treat epilepsy over the last two centuries and successfully reduces nervous system excitability. Many of the drugs used for chronic pain (such as Lyrica) are also anti-epileptic medications, suggesting common pathways. As well as these impacts on the nervous system, pre-clinical research has also shown ketones to be signalling molecules that reduce inflammation.

Combined with the clinical reports that pain reduction occurred when people were on ketogenic diets, it seemed reasonable to test the diet specifically in a chronic pain population.

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Knee Arthritis: Racial Differences in Treatment Patterns and Health Care Expenditures

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Stuart L. Silverman MD FACP FACR
Clinical Professor of Medicine, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and UCLA School of Medicine
Medical Director, OMC Clinical Research Center
Beverly Hills, CA 90211

Dr. Silverman

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

Response: As a practicing rheumatologist, I am aware that prior studies have shown variation in medical care, pain management and treatment with opioids by race and social economic status.  Suboptimal treatment of pain in patients with osteoarthritis (OA) may also disproportionately burden racial minorities and Medicaid recipients. 

Studies have shown that African Americans are nearly 1.5 times as likely to have symptomatic knee OA than White patients even when adjusting for other factors.  Similarly, they also have a higher prevalence of symptomatic and radiographic hip OA.  Analyses of Medicare data has shown evidence of persistent racial disparities for joint arthroplasty usage and surgical outcomes.

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Medical Cannabis May Be Helpful For Pain Relief in a Minority of People with Chronic Pain, But Will Not Be Effective For Most

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
JASON BUSSE DC, PhD
Associate Professor
Associate Director
Michael G. DeGroote Centre for Medicinal Cannabis Research
McMaster University Medical Centre
Ontario, Canada

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

Response: Our focused clinical practice guideline was informed by 4 systematic reviews exploring benefits and harms of medical cannabis for chronic pain, the potential for cannabis to help people who live with pain to reduce their use of opioids, and patients values & preferences regarding medical cannabis for chronic pain. We found that non-inhaled medical cannabis provided small to very small improvements in pain relief, physical functioning and sleep quality compared to placebo, but did not improve mental functioning, role functioning or social functioning. Use of medical cannabis, versus placebo, also caused small increases in the risk of several transient, moderate, side effects, such as impaired attention, nausea, and drowsiness, and a larger increase in the risk of dizziness.

There was insufficient evidence to inform the risk of serious adverse events, such as motor vehicle accidents, cannabis use disorder (addiction), or suicide. We also found that patients’ attitudes towards medical cannabis show considerable variation, meaning that when presented with the same evidence different patients are likely to make different decisions about embarking on a trial of medical cannabis. Due to the close balance between modest benefits and harms, and high variability among patients’ attitudes, we made a weak recommendation to consider a trial of medical cannabis for people living with chronic pain who had not achieved sufficient relief with standard care.

A weak recommendation means that clinicians should provide chronic pain patients with the evidence for benefits and harms and help them to make a decision consistent with their patient’s values and preferences.

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Physicians Differently Prescribe Pain Relief Medications to White and Minority Patients

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Dan P. Ly M.D., M.P.P., Ph.D.
Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research
David Geffen School of Medicine
University of California, Los Angeles

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

Response: We know that minority patients were less likely to receive opioids than white patients, but this could have been due to minority patients seeing lower opioid-prescribing physicians. As far as I could tell, nobody had been able to examine whether the same physician prescribed opioids differently to their minority patients.

I find that this is the case: the same physician was less likely to prescribe opioids to their minority patients with new low back pain, and instead was more likely to prescribe NSAIDs to their minority patients. And unfortunately, this differential prescribing may have had the consequence of leading to more chronic opioid use in white patients.  

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Medlab Clinical Developing New Buccal Spray for Chronic Cancer Pain Relief

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Dr.  Jeremy Henson
Director of Medical Affairs
Medlab Clinical Ltd

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

Response: THC and CBD combination medicines have the potential to provide a non-opioid option for chronic pain that does not have the GIT or respiratory adverse reactions of opioids and allows better cognitive functioning.

Delivery across the oro-buccal membrane appears to be best method of administration of cannabinoids for chronic pain. Oro-buccal delivery has pharmacokinetics appropriate for 6-8 hourly maintenance dosing and avoids first pass metabolism and the slow erratic onset of ingestion; and the high serum THC peaks, frequent redosing and toxic oxidation products of vaping.

The problems with using a 50% ethanol vehicle to deliver cannabinoids across the oro-buccal membrane include local irritation, incomplete absorption and significant systemic ethanol levels. These issues could be solved by using a micellular nanoparticle to solubilise the cannabinoids and deliver them across the oro-buccal mucous membrane.

This study was a first in human study of a micellular nanoparticle formulation of 1:1 THC and CBD delivered as an oro-buccal spray for chronic cancer pain.

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Study Identifies Three Patterns of Medical Cannabis Use for Pain

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Dr. Deepika Slawek,

PainRelief.com Interview with:
Deepika Slawek, MD, MS, MPH (she/hers)
Assistant Professor of Medicine, Division of General Internal Medicine
Montefiore Medical Center
Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Bronx, NY 10467

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

Response: Medical cannabis has become increasingly available in the United States over the past 25 years and is commonly used for the management of pain. Little is known about the patterns of medical cannabis use by patients with chronic pain. This information could help providers anticipate patients’ needs and identify potential disparities in access.

We followed 99 adults in New York State who were newly certified for medical cannabis use and who were prescribed opioids over the course of 1 year. Using a latent class trajectory analysis, we identified clusters of participants based on 14-day frequency of medical cannabis use. We used logistic regression to determine factors associated with cluster membership including sociodemographic characteristics, pain, substance use, and mental health symptoms.

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Synovial Stem Cells Injected into Knee Repaired Meniscus without Tumor Formation

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Mitsuru Mizuno, DVM, Ph.D.
Assistant professor at CSCRM,
Principal investigator for this study
and Ichiro Sekiya, M.D., Ph.D..

PainRelief.com:  What is the background for this study?  What are the main findings? How are the stem cells obtained?

Response: We have developed a cell therapy for treating difficult-to-heal meniscus injury using mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) derived from the synovium of the knee. However, trisomy 7 is often found in synovial cells obtained from patients with osteoarthritis, a disease that occurs with aging.

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Back Pain: SelfBACK app To Help Patients Find Pain Relief From Self-Managed Program

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Louise Fleng Sandal PhD
Adjunkt, Institut for Idræt og Biomekanik
SDU University of Southern Denmark

Dr. Sandal

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

Response: Low back pain is a globally prevalent condition with a high economic cost. Many people seek help with primary care from their general practitioner, physiotherapist or chiropractor. Evidence-based guidelines on first line treatment include learning to self-manage, staying active, exercising and learning about the condition. However, many find this difficult without advice and support, but primary care physicians often lack the time and resources to support self-management.

Digital solutions, such as smartphone technology, utilizing artificial intelligence can be used to tailor self-management support to the individual and be available at the individuals convenience.

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Routine Lumbar X-Rays of Limited Value in Assessing Low Back Pain

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Lingxiao Chen | MBBS, MMed, PhD Candidate
The University of Sydney
Institute of Bone and Joint Research | The Kolling Institute
Sydney Medical School | Faculty of Medicine and Health
Statistical Editor of BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine

back pain

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

Response: Current guidelines for treatment of low back pain (LBP) do not recommend routinely using diagnostic imaging, except when patients either present with severe, progressive neurologic deficits or with signs or symptoms indicative of a serious or specific underlying condition (eg, fracture or cancer). Nonetheless, diagnostic imaging is still widely used in clinical practice for low back pain. Previous studies, using mostly cross-sectional data, provide conflicting evidence of an association between lumbar spine radiographic changes and the severity of back pain–related disability. Such conflicting evidence may be associated with widely unnecessary diagnostic imaging of the lumbar spine.

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Redheads May Experience Pain Differently

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
David E. Fisher MD, PhD
Edward Wigglesworth Professor & Chairman
Dept of Dermatology
Director, Melanoma Program MGH Cancer Center
Director, Cutaneous Biology Research Center
Massachusetts General Hospital
Harvard Medical School

Dr. Fisher

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

Response: This study followed up on prior published work from other investigators which demonstrated altered pain thresholds in humans and mice who had the redhair light-skin phenotypes.  The key focus of our current study was to firstly validate the overall findings, and then to  the mechanistic basis for the differences.  Of note, our laboratory does not primarily focus on the science of pain or nociceptive, but rather on skin and melanoma. For this reason we had accumulated a number of valuable genetic models of pigmentation (such as redhaired mice harboring alterations in the identical gene implicated in human red hair).  These mouse models served as the key resources for carrying out the current study.

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