NCT03547869

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation for Pain Treatment in Gulf War Illness.

Investigating Pain in Gulf War Illness With Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation.

• Status: Terminated
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 9 (actual)
• Sponsor: The University of Texas at Dallas · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 45 Years – 78 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

The goal of this study is to investigate long-term modulation of pain pathways leading to a suppression of pain symptoms in Gulf War Illness patients by applying transcranial direct current stimulation.

Detailed description

Gulf War Illness is a chronic and multisymptomatic disorder affecting returning military veterans of the 1990-1991 Gulf war. Pain is a major complaint of Gulf War Illness patients and is a leading cause of disability in veterans diagnosed with musculoskeletal ailments including joint and muscle pain, muscle fatigue, difficulty with lifting objects, and extremity paresthesia's. As a result, the target of the present study is the treatment of the pain symptoms, as this is detectable across all Gulf War Illness case classification systems. Transcranial Direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a non-invasive and painless electrical stimulation technique that has already demonstrated to improve pain symptoms in other patient populations, e.g. fibromyalgia patients. To investigate whether we can improve pain symptoms in GWI patients with pain complaints, we will compare behavioral (questionnaires) and electrophysiological (Electroencephalography) measures before and immediately after 10 sessions of tDCS and on several follow up sessions after the last tDCS from 2 groups.

Conditions

• Gulf War Syndrome

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
DEVICE	Active tDCS	Active tDCS will be adminestered
DEVICE	Sham tDCS	Sham tDCS will be administered

Timeline

• Start date: 2018-03-12
• Primary completion: 2022-01-25
• Completion: 2023-01-25
• First posted: 2018-06-06
• Last updated: 2025-02-03
• Results posted: 2025-02-03

Locations

2 sites across 1 country: United States

Regulatory

• FDA-regulated device study