New hope for patients with severe pain syndrome
Patients a chronic pain syndrome are to be offered new hope by taking part in a new research study which could lead to their symptoms being more effectively treated.
Chronic regional pain syndrome (CRPS) is a rare but severe type of rheumatic disease which causes excruciating limb pain to sufferers and often develops after a minor injury. It also leads to temperature changes, and sweating and swelling, and in extreme cases the affected limb has to be amputated. Even lightly brushing the skin can trigger extreme pain, in a process known as allodynia.
The Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases in Bath is a leading centre for the treatment and research into CPRS, also known as reflex sympathetic dystrophy (RSD).
Now Dr Helen Cohen from the RNHRD has been awarded a £212,379 clinical research fellowship over three years by leading medical research charity the Arthritis Research Campaign (arc) to investigate how chronic pain can both affect and be affected by reflexes controlling blood flow and sweating, and by sensations such as touch and vision. She hopes her research findings will also benefit people with other painful arthritic conditions such as rheumatoid and osteoarthritis.
It is believed that in CPRS pathways processing pain to and from the brain get muddled up. Research at the RNRD has proved that patients’ pain can be relieved performing a series of routine exercises in front of a mirror, with more than half of patients experiencing pain relief during and after exercises. This demonstrates the Bath team’s new theory about how people experience pain: that the brain’s image of the body can become faulty, resulting in a mismatch between the brain’s movement control systems and its sensory systems, causing a person to experience pain when they move a particular limb.
“It’s possible that some of these techniques that have been developed for CRPS might cross over to people with rheumatoid and osteoarthritis, who also suffer from allodynia,” explained Dr Cohen.
“We’re interested in finding out more about the reflexes that control the sweat and blood flow and how these reflexes are affected by chronic pain and how the sensory networks in the body get muddles up. The information we gain from this study will help us to understand these processes better, enabling us to target treatment most effectively.”
About 40 patients from RNHRD with CPRS, and 80 healthy volunteers will be recruited from August.
