Dry needling versus magnesium sulfate iontophoresis of active trigger points of the axioscapular muscle in neck pain: a single blind randomized controlled trial.

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc, published as a randomized controlled trial.

To compare the effects of dry needling (DN) and magnesium sulfate (MgSO4) iontophoresis on pressure pain threshold (PPT), neck disability, pain intensity and muscle activity/amplitude in patients with upper-trapezius active myofascial trigger points (MTrPs) and neck pain.

Who Took Part

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were young adults, adults and middle-aged adults, both men and women.

Sixty subjects with neck pain and cervical myofascial pain syndrome (MPS) of the upper trapezius muscles were randomly assigned into a DN group that received DN and stretching of all cervical muscles, an iontophoresis group that received MgSO4 iontophoresis and stretching of all cervical muscles or a control group C that received only stretching of all cervical muscles.

PPT, Arabic neck disability index (ANDI), pain intensity visual analogue scale (VAS) and cervical muscle amplitude (assessed by electromyography and expressed as a normalized root mean square (RMS)) were measured before and after completion of the treatment.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized and single-blind study.

Because people in this Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

In this single-blind Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc study one party knew the assignments and the other did not.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Neck Pain, Iontophoresis, Dry Needling, Trigger Points, Magnesium Sulfate, Myofascial Pain Syndromes and Pain Measurement.

The authors tagged it with the keywords electrophoresis and myofascial trigger points.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and single-blind study of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc.

Results are reported in around 5 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2026 (Acupuncture in medicine : journal of the British Medical Acupuncture Society), a journal based in England.

More context: the Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc compound page, all human trials.