NCT05415423

Developing an Objective Measure of Experienced Pain

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 330 (actual)
• Sponsor: University of Zurich · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 60 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

Pain is a public health challenge around the world. However, there is no single standardized measure of pain, to the point that the estimated prevalence of chronic pain in adults ranges between 2% and 64% depending on the methods and definitions used. Existing measures of pain are known to present several problems and results can be hardly compared between people. The investigators propose and empirically validate a new, simple method to measure experienced pain in clinical trials. The method provides an objective, cardinal measurement of experienced pain which is comparable between people and the investigators test whether it is better able to measure experienced pain than existing procedures. The investigators test the new method in healthy participants using standard protocols (electrical and heat stimuli). The investigators also aim to validate the measure using a causal manipulation which relies on the administration of a topical analgesic product compared to a placebo.

Detailed description

The aim of this study is to establish and validate the proposed method of measuring pain using different pain stimuli. The investigators correlate these measurements with physiological data such as skin-conductance, heart-rate variability, pupil dilation, and with established measures of pain such as Numeric rating scale (NRS), Visual analog scale (VAS), general Labeled Magnitude Scale (gLMS). In addition, the investigators study the test-retest reliability of our measure of pain and its ability to capture a reduction in experienced pain due to a topical analgesic product compared to a placebo treatment.

Conditions

• Pain, Acute

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Developing an objective measure of experienced pain	At the beginning of each study, participants are randomly allocated into one of two groups. Within each group all participants are exposed to the same painful stimulus. One group experiences a painful stimulus of higher intensity compared to that of the other group. The painful stimuli are physically identical for every subject within the same group and within the standard of previous pain research. Participants are then asked to evaluate the painful stimulus they just received according to a self-reported scale (NRS, VAS, gLMS, NRS-MB). Participants are also asked to decide multiple times whether they prefer a larger amount of money and experience the same or more painful stimulus they received before or a smaller amount of money and no (or a less) painful stimulus. The smaller amount of money is progressively increased across choices until it matches the larger amount, similar to multiple price-list methods (MPL) which are standard in economics.

Timeline

• Start date: 2022-06-06
• Primary completion: 2022-09-26
• Completion: 2022-09-26
• First posted: 2022-06-13
• Last updated: 2022-10-12

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Switzerland