People who experience regular chronic pain have new hope for relief from a new device unveiled in the United States this week.
Researchers at the University of Utah have published promising findings about an experimental therapy based on a single treatment session. They are now recruiting participants for a final round of trials.
The device is called a Diadem and it uses ultrasound to noninvasively stimulate deep brain regions, potentially disrupting the faulty signals that lead to chronic pain.
“Pain is a necessary biological signal, but a variety of conditions can cause those signals to go awry,” the research report said.
“For people with chronic pain, the root is often faulty signals emerging deep within the brain, giving false alarms about a wound that has since healed, a limb that has since been amputated or other intricate, hard-to-explain scenarios.”
The research team said it had not been expecting such strong and immediate results from only one treatment.
University of Utah researcher, Professor Jan Kubanek, said the research was now moving towards approval for the next stage of human trials.
“The rapid onset of the pain symptom improvements as well as their sustained nature are intriguing,” he said.
“(They) open doors for applying these non-invasive treatments to the many patients who are resistant to current treatments.”
An article published in the journal Pain outlined the unique features of the ultrasound device.
The randomised “sham-controlled” study recruited 20 participants with chronic pain, who each experienced two 40-minute sessions with Diadem, receiving either real or sham ultrasound stimulation.
“Patients described their pain a day and a week after their sessions, with 60 percent of the experimental group receiving real treatment reporting a clinically meaningful reduction in symptoms at both points,” the research report said.
“Diadem’s approach is based on neuromodulation, a therapeutic technique that seeks to directly regulate the activity of certain brain circuits. Other neuromodulation approaches are based on electric currents and magnetic fields, but those methods cannot selectively reach the brain structure investigated in the researchers’ recent trial: the anterior cingulate cortex.”
The full report is on the University of Utah website.
