Osteopathic Manipulation Makes a Neuropsychological Difference

Patients with pain commonly experience cognitive impairment. While symptoms of pain are effectively treated with osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT), the cognitive piece is vastly ignored. Previous research has already reported related psychiatric outcomes, including relief from stress, self-perception and anxiety, suggesting that OMT may produce more global effects on cortical processing than currently thought. The current study is designed to extend previous research in several ways:

• To describe the neuropsychological (NP) characteristics of adults with pain within an osteopathic and allopathic setting
• To correlate NP with clinical outcomes (pain severity, number/location of osteopathic lesions)
• To determine if OMT is associated with improved NP function.
• To use saliva to measure cytokine concentration of IL-1β,IL-6, IL-8, TNF-α
• To correlate cytokine concentrations with clinical outcomes (pain severity, number/location of osteopathic lesions, NP)

Inclusion criteria

• 40 years of age or older;
• seeking treatment for acute or chronic pain (neck, thoracic, shoulder, back)
• gives a positive response to the item, "Have you had thinking problems because of your pain?";
• agree to forego extra-trial manipulation (e.g., massage, chiropractic, physical therapy);
• Score > 23 on the Telephone Interview for Cognitive Status;
• written informed consent.

Exclusion criteria

• recent (< 2 month) or planned surgery within the duration of the study;
• use of medication that could interfere with cytokine measurements;
• recent (< 2 month) changes to psychotropic medication within the duration of the study;
• history of manipulation within the past six months.
• diagnosed neurocognitive disorders;
• contraindication to receiving OMT.