Effects of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation on Knee Osteoarthritis Pain in Elderly Subjects With Defective Endogenous Pain-Inhibitory Systems: Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Knee osteoarthritis (OA) has been the main cause behind chronic pain and disabilities in the elderly population. The traditional treatment for knee OA pain currently concerns a number of combinations of pharmacological and nonpharmacological therapies. However, such combinations have displayed little effects on a significant group of subjects. In addition to this, pharmacological treatments often cause adverse effects, which limits their use on this population. Previous studies showed that chronic knee OA pain may be associated with maladaptive compensatory plasticity in pain-related neural central circuits indexed by a defective descending pain-inhibitory system. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) can revert some of these maladaptive changes, thus decreasing

SUBMITTER: Tavares DRB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6234349 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature