Chronic lower back pain reduced by TENS whatever your age, claims new research

Pain sensitivity and central excitability improve after transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) independent of age, type of back pain and disability, a research team highlights in The Journal of Pain.
Chronic low back pain is a highly prevalent and disabling musculoskeletal pain condition. TENS is commonly used to treat it, but little is known about if older adults respond differently to TENS than younger adults.

So experts took 60 people with chronic lower back pain and split them into three groups: young, middle-aged and older. They were given four 20-minute sessions of high frequency, high intensity TENS over a two to three weeks in a lab.

Standard measures were made of pain sensitivity, central pain excitability and episodic and immediate relief of pain. Self-reported disability and daily pain reports across sessions were taken into account.

Results
• Independent of age, pain sensitivity and central excitability improved after TENS;
• Independent of age, resting pain, movement pain, and disability improved after TENS;
• Older adults demonstrated similar TENS response as younger and middle-aged adults;
• Older adults had higher TENS amplitude than younger and middle-aged adults.

Implications
“These findings suggest that older adults experience similar episodic axial chronic lower back pain relief as younger individuals following high frequency, high intensity TENS when higher dosage parameters are used,” the authors say. “The fact that older adults had comparable TENS response though at higher TENS amplitude than younger adults, may have important mechanistic and clinical implications.”

Click here to read the original research.

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Image credit: Petras Gagilas