CT-optimal touch and chronic pain experience in Parkinson's Disease; An intervention study

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Abstract

One of the most underdiagnosed and undertreated non-motor symptoms of Parkinson's Disease is chronic pain. This is generally treated with analgesics which is not always effective and can cause several side-effects. Therefore, new ways to reduce chronic pain are needed. Several experimental studies show that CT-optimal touch can reduce acute pain. However, little is known about the effect of CT-optimal touch on chronic pain. The aim of the current study is to investigate whether CT-optimal touch can reduce the chronic pain experience in Parkinson patients. In this intervention study, 17 Parkinson patients underwent three conditions; no touch, CT-optimal touch and CT non-optimal touch with a duration of one week each. During each touch week, participants received touch from their partners twice a day for 15 minutes. Results show that both types of touch ameliorate the chronic pain experience. Furthermore, it appears that it is slightly more beneficial to apply CT-optimal touch also because it is perceived as more pleasant. Therefore, we argue that CT-optimal touch might be used when immediate pain relief is needed. Importantly, this study shows that CT-optimal touch can reduce chronic pain in Parkinson's Disease and can be administered by a partner which makes it feasible to implement CT-optimal touch as daily routine.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere0298345
Number of pages18
JournalPLoS One
Volume19
Issue number2 February
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 23 Feb 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
Copyright: © 2024 Meijer et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding

Funding was obtained by Meijer, Dijkerman and Smagt. There is no Grant number. The Dutch Stichting Parkinsonfonds offered the Grant. https://www.parkinsonfonds.nl/. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

FundersFunder number
Dutch Parkinsonfonds

    Keywords

    • Analgesics
    • Chronic Pain
    • Emotions
    • Humans
    • Parkinson Disease/complications
    • Tomography, X-Ray Computed
    • Touch Perception

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