Cytokine and neuropeptide levels are associated with pain relief in patients with chronically painful total knee arthroplasty: a pilot study

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Substance P in the context of chronic pain: fibromyalgia & crps in this randomized controlled trial publication.

There are few studies with an assessment of the levels of cytokines or neuropeptides as correlates of pain and pain relief in patients with painful joint diseases.

Who Took Part

The age groups tagged for this paper are older adults, both men and women.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized and pilot study.

The participants were allocated by chance, so the Substance P group and the comparison group should start out alike.

It is described as a pilot, a small early test of whether a larger Substance P study would be practical.

Sensitivity analysis used 0-10 daytime pain numeric rating scale (NRS) instead of WOMAC pain subscale.

What Was Measured

There are few studies with an assessment of the levels of cytokines or neuropeptides as correlates of pain and pain relief in patients with painful joint diseases.

The subject headings attached to it are Arthroplasty, Replacement, Knee, Biomarkers, Chemokines, Postoperative Pain, Pilot Projects and Substance P.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Cytokine, Primary total knee arthroplasty and TKA.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and pilot study of Substance P in people with chronic pain: fibromyalgia & crps.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 5 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2017 (BMC musculoskeletal disorders), a journal based in England.

More context: the Substance P compound page, Chronic pain: fibromyalgia & CRPS research.