NCT03768947

Heat Therapy for Fibromyalgia

Heat Therapy for Fibromyalgia: The Effect on Chronic Pain and Possible Mechanisms

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 8 (actual)
• Sponsor: University of Kansas Medical Center · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 65 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

The purpose of this study is to see if heat therapy intervention via hot water immersion (i.e., a hot tub) is an effective treatment for patients with Fibromyalgia.

Detailed description

Fibromyalgia (FM) is a complex and difficult-to-treat painful medical condition and is marked by chronic widespread musculoskeletal pain, decreased pain threshold, and comorbid symptomatology (e.g. fatigue, trouble thinking). Several factors appear to play a role in the pathophysiology of FM: abnormal pain processing, abnormal autonomic nervous and neuroendocrine system function, genetics, and environmental triggers. The prognosis for recovery in traditional medicine is generally poor and current pharmacological treatments for FM are often insufficient to control persistent symptoms. As such, complementary medicine and alternative lifestyle approaches are needed. Heat therapy, such as saunas and hot tubs, has been used historically for its presumed therapeutic benefits, and emerging research highlights the benefits of heat therapy on metabolic and cardiovascular disease risks. Finnish saunas, which result in total-body heating, have shown beneficial clinical effects for rheumatic patients and new studies are needed to determine if heat therapy could improve pain symptoms in patients with FM. The short-term goal of the investigators is to determine, in a pilot clinical study, that heat therapy intervention via hot water immersion is a safe and efficacious treatment for pain in patients with FM. The overall hypothesis is that heat therapy intervention will improve clinical pain severity and associated dysfunction in a cohort of FM patients and that the anti-inflammatory actions of heat shock proteins may mediate this improvement. The proposed interdisciplinary study will provide data regarding treatment efficacy and will explore potential molecular and physiologic processes that may underlie improvement in pain symptoms after heat therapy intervention for FM. Furthermore, these key pilot studies will provide important preliminary data for future studies.

Conditions

• Fibromyalgia

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Heat therapy via hot water immersion	Participants will be asked to participate in a 4-week heat therapy intervention, which consists of \~12-15 visits (45 min each) of immersion in to a hot tub.

Timeline

• Start date: 2019-07-19
• Primary completion: 2020-03-10
• Completion: 2020-03-10
• First posted: 2018-12-07
• Last updated: 2022-06-15

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States