In today’s world, technology makes it easy to find your way to any destination. Jump in the car, set your GPS, and travel with confidence, knowing the GPS will guide you through any hazards or wrong turns. But navigating your chronic pain is another story. In the U.S., 21% of adults (about 51 million people) currently experience chronic pain.¹ Each person experiences their pain in a unique way, which makes finding effective treatments challenging — the road to relief varies from person to person.

But technology has advanced rapidly in recent years, unlocking possibilities in health care that were once unimaginable. Could these advances help scientists better navigate the complexity of pain to arrive at new solutions — and more relief? Researchers from the National Institutes of Health Helping to End Addiction Long-term® Initiative, or NIH HEAL Initiative®, are on a mission to find out. The NIH HEAL Initiative is an NIH-wide effort to speed scientific solutions to the overdose epidemic, including opioid and substance use disorders, and the crisis of chronic pain. Here are a few ways HEAL teams are leveraging technology across multiple studies in pursuit of better pain management.

Conducting non-invasive electrosonic brain stimulation

Of the more than 13 million Americans with carpal tunnel syndrome, it is estimated that at least 18% experience debilitating pain that has become “centralized” within the brain – meaning that the brain is creating the perception of pain, even though there is only minor, or no,  apparent physical damage or injury.² For some of these individuals, various treatments including physical therapy, acupuncture, surgery, and medications have not helped.

To address this challenge, HEAL-funded researchers are testing non-invasive stimulation pad applied to the scalp to calm brain-caused pain in people with carpal tunnel syndrome.

The technology they are using, Electrosonic Stimulation (ESStim™), does not require surgery. Neuromodulation works through a combination of electrical and ultrasound energy, targeting areas of the brain that process pain. The process can act like an electrical switch to turn up or down nerve activity, with the intent to decrease pain signals.

Results from this initial study are exciting: patients receiving the treatment reported less pain, along with improvements in the ability to use their hands. A second phase of the research, which includes more patients, will test whether physical therapy adds even more relief.

Read the full story.

Using artificial intelligence to find a ‘signature’ that predicts chronic pain risk

About 3.5 million adolescents in the United States live with chronic pain in their bones, joints, muscles, and surrounding tissues, known as musculoskeletal pain, but only about half find effective relief. Those who do not find relief are diagnosed with treatment-resistant chronic musculoskeletal pain. Laura Simons, Ph.D., of Stanford University School of Medicine, is working to understand why by analyzing the most detailed data collected to date from a large group of adolescents with musculoskeletal pain.

Simons’ SPRINT: Signature for Pain Recovery IN Teens study is using this data to look for a “pain signature,” or a unique pattern of characteristics, that will accurately predict chronic musculoskeletal pain in teens. The SPRINT team’s data reflects the experiences of hundreds of adolescents and includes biological measures like brain scans, fatigue and sleep health, sensitivity to touch and painful stimuli, and immune system activity, among other data. Simons’ team is also investigating how psychological and social factors affect treatment response in teens with chronic pain.

To generate a signature that can predict chronic musculoskeletal pain, Simons and her team are inputting the thousands of data points into artificial intelligence (AI) tools that can accurately and quickly find data relationships and patterns that would take much longer via manual analysis. In the first phase of the study, the AI technology helps the study team identify all the components of a pain persistence signature, and in the next phase, the SPRINT team will see if the signature holds up in a different, unrelated group of adolescents with chronic musculoskeletal pain.

The SPRINT study team hopes that the ability to predict those teens who are at risk for treatment-resistant chronic musculoskeletal pain will ultimately lead to the development of screening tools in health care settings and more potential solutions to solve the difficult problem of chronic pain in adolescence.

Read the full story.

Building a tissue chip model to screen potential new medications

Identifying potential new medications is difficult and requires extensive testing in animal models. What’s more, usually only a small fraction of potential compounds tested are suitable for testing in humans, and researchers must screen large numbers of possible medications if they want to identify even one promising one.

To address this challenge, HEAL-funded scientists, together with scientists from AxoSim, Inc., have created a tissue chip-based model system that can screen molecules in minutes. This “living pain circuit” is a 3D system of nerve cells that connect to each other just like they do in the body.

The team showed that cells in the chip model grew correctly and worked as expected. They formed properly functioning nerve cell connections, and their response to common pain medications was like what occurs naturally in the body. This new research takes a significant step forward toward expanding medication options for the millions of Americans who need effective, non-addictive pain relief.

Read the full story.

These and many other technology-driven research efforts are removing critical roadblocks that have long hindered our understanding of, and developing effective treatments for, chronic pain. Together, they offer real hope for a journey to relief that is faster and more direct than we have known to date. Be on the lookout for published results of these exciting efforts in the coming months!

1. https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-study-finds-high-rates-persistent-chronic-pain-among-us-adults
2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK553027/

HEAL Connections

[Insert organization] is a part of the HEAL Connections Center, created by the NIH HEAL Initiative® to translate HEAL research into action. The center’s goals are twofold: to create pathways to further build and sustain community partnerships, and to support HEAL researchers in meaningfully sharing results with communities and stakeholders that will benefit most from research findings. Learn more