Vitamin C hope for people suffering from extreme pain syndrome
Researchers in Bristol are hoping that a simple course of Vitamin C could reduce the effects of an extreme pain syndrome which develops in 30 per cent of people who fracture their wrists.
Complex regional pain syndrome (also known as reflex sympathetic dystrophy or RSD) is a poorly understood condition that causes crippling pain, with the affected limb often swelling up and becoming hot and stiff. In severe cases it is incurable, but it also occurs in a more transient form in patients who have had a fractures or undergone orthopaedic surgery. Painkillers and physiotherapy usually fail to control the pain.
Now a team at Bristol Royal Infirmary's university department of orthopaedics - a leading research centre into CRPS - plan to recruit up to 300 patients from the Bristol area to test the effectiveness of Vitamin C in preventing CRPS in wrist fracture patients.
Orthopaedic surgeon Andrew McBride has an NHS clinical research fellowship to carry out the 18-month project, with medical research charity the Arthritis Research Campaign providing £8,000 for vitamins and equipment.
"CRPS is usually considered to be a condition of the nervous system, but there is increasing evidence that it happens as a result of an inflammatory reaction," explained Mr McBride.
"Previous research has also suggested that the inflammatory process may be sparked off by free radicals - molecules that damage the body's cells and tissues. So countering these effects with Vitamin C - an antioxidant which disarms free radicals - could be a very simple but effective way of helping people who suffer from this horribly painful condition."
Of the patients recruited (mainly women with osteoporosis aged over 50) half will be given Vitamin C over a six-week period. The others will be given a placebo (fake pill). An earlier, smaller study showed that only eight per cent of patients given Vitamin C developed CRPS, compared to 22 per cent who did not take Vitamin C.
Bristol is a major centre of Arthritis Research Campaign-funded work, with the charity pumping in £1.5m into 19 projects. The fourth biggest medical research charity in the UK, it raised more than £26m from public donations in the past 12 months.
